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Shoopman Cemetery is located just off S.R. 63 in Huntsville
On a small knoll just north of S.R. 63 in Huntsville, less than a quarter of a mile from its terminus at U.S. Highway 27, is the Shoopman Cemetery.
Dating back to the 1890s, this cemetery is actually located on Old Monticello Pike, which was the main road from Huntsville to Helenwood at that time, before S.R. 63 was built. Shoopman, which also factors prominently at the Riverview Cemetery at Smokey Junction, is not an especially common surname in Scott County today, but it is belongs to one of the county’s earliest families, dating back to when John Shoopman moved from Virginia to Smokey Creek in the early 19th century.
The Shoopman family
John Shoopman, the family patriarch who moved from Virginia to Smokey Creek in the early 1800s, died in 1842. He and his wife, Sarah Smith (who died in 1850), had several children — one of them being John Shoopman Jr.
John Shoopman Jr., born in 1803, married Elizabeth Low. She was the daughter of Mikel Low, believed to be the first permanent settler in present-day Scott County. John and Elizabeth, who are believed to be buried in the Lowe Cemetery at Smokey Creek in unmarked graves, raised seven children: Sarah Massengale, Joseph, Jacob, Emaline Hembree, Louisa Massengale, Milton, and Martha.
Joseph Shoopman, born in 1830, married Lousia “Caroline” Rich (1838-1926) and moved to what would eventually be known as Helenwood, and today is part of Huntsville. He was one of the few people from Scott County who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. He was a private in the 2nd Tennessee Infantry Regiment. Caroline was the daughter of William and Lucinda Rich of Scott County.
The first person buried at the family cemetery along the old Monticello Pike was Almira Shoopman, who died on Christmas Day in 1895 at age 24. It’s not exactly clear what her relationship was to Joseph and Caroline Shoopman.
Complicating the search for Almira’s ancestry is that she, Joseph and Caroline did not appear in census records in 1880. Nor did Joseph and Caroline appear in census records in 1870.
When the 1860 census was taken, 26-year-old Joseph and 19-year-old Caroline were listed in a Huntsville household with 7-year-old William, 5-year-old Jacob, 4-year-old Mary and 2-year-old Sarah.
It isn’t clear why Joseph and his family didn’t appear in the 1870 or 1880 census records. When the 1900 census was taken, Caroline was listed as widowed (Joseph died on Feb. 13, 1900, three days before his 70th birthday, and was buried next to Almira in the Shoopman Cemetery). Also living in the home were two of Caroline’s grandchildren, 21-year-old Stokley Shoopman and 11-year-old Iva Shoopman. That same census recorded that Caroline had seven children, four of whom were still alive.
Stokley was buried at the Shoopman Cemetery in 1953. He does not have a headstone; a funeral home marker denotes his grave. According to his death certificate, he was the son of William Shoopman and Susie Wilder. His wife was Anna Ramsey, who is also buried at the cemetery with a funeral home marker.
What happened to Iva Shoopman? She was boarding with a Blankenship family in Middlesboro, Ky. when the 1910 census was taken, and isn’t found after that.
It isn’t clear why Stokley and Iva were living with their grandmother in 1900, but William Shoopman was still alive and well at the time. He died in 1936 and is buried at the family cemetery. In 1900, he was living in Scott County with his wife, Sarah, and four children ranging in ages from 21 to five.
Caroline was living with daughter Mary and her family when the 1910 census was taken, and with William and his family when the 1920 census was taken.
The most obvious assumption would be that Almira Shoopman, the first person buried at Shoopman Cemetery in 1895, was a daughter of Joseph and Caroline Shoopman. But that is only an assumption.
The Wilder tragedies
Following Joseph’s death in 1900, the third person buried at the cemetery was Marshall C. Wilder in 1906. The 23-year-old was shot and killed by Mack Woods in a fight that occurred at Somerset, Ky. According to a newspaper article, Wilder shot Woods twice in the abdomen, after which Woods was able to wrestle the gun away and shoot Wilder. Both men died.
Marshall Wilder was a veteran of the Spanish-American War, and worked as a brakeman on the Southern Railroad.
In 1910, Marshall’s 24-year-old brother, Waller “Press” (Preston) Wilder was buried at the cemetery. Press was implicated in the shooting death of constable Fowler Keeton in 1908, along with Kaywood Reed “and a boy named Clark,” according to the Knoxville Sentinel. When he died, Press was incarcerated in the state prison in Nashville.
Marshall and Press were the sons of Lee and Mary Shoopman Wilder — grandsons of Joseph and Caroline Shoopman. It’s not clear that Susie Wilder, who was Stokley Shoopman’s mother, was part of the same Wilder family, though it would obviously stand to reckon that she might have been connected in some way.
Lee was the son of Wilson C. Wilder and Susan Wilder of Lexington, Ky.
Lee and Mary were later buried at the cemetery, Mary in 1927 and Lee in 1938. They had two other children, Bettie Reed (1889-1968) and Lula S. Newman (1894-1975). Bettie and her husband, Manus Reed (1886-1959), were later buried at the cemetery, as well.
The Miller family
Among the many mysteries at Shoopman Cemetery is that of the Miller family. When Robert Bailey transcribed the cemetery for his 1994 Cemeteries of Scott County, Tennessee book that is available for purchase from the Scott County Historical Society, he listed a couple of Millers who had funeral home markers rather than headstones. However, those markers have since disappeared.
One of those was six-year-old Haywood Miller, who died in 1907. The other was infant Violet Miller, who died in 1908. They were the fourth and fifth persons buried at the cemetery.
There are other Millers at the cemetery with funeral home markers, including Caywood Miller, who died in 1913 at the age of about 20; Emma Miller, who died in 1925 at the age of about 58; and Olver Miller, who died in 1946 at the age of about 77.
Olver was Oliver Miller (1869-1946), and Emma would have been his wife, Emily Pemberton (1867-1925). She was from the prominent Glenmary family of Pembertons that included Churchwell Pemberton and Gatewood Pemberton.
It appears that Haywood, Caywood and Violet were all children of Oliver and Emma. Surviving children included Martha Lawson, Ella Jane Lewallen, Rosalie Miller, and Naomi Shoopman.
Naomi, the next-to-youngest, married Bryce Jacob Shoopman (1902-1969) in 1928. He was the son of Jacob William Shoopman (1878-1942) and Lottie Elizabeth Shelton (1883-1951). Jacob William was the son of Jacob “Jake” Shoopman (1855-1877) and Sarah Catherine Shumate (1855-1921). Jake was the son of Joseph Shoopman and Caroline Rich — making Bryce Shoopman their great-grandson.
The cemetery grows
By the time Caywood Miller died at the age of about 20 in 1913, there had been seven people buried at Shoopman Cemetery: Joseph and Almira Shoopman, along with the Miller children and the Wilder brothers.
In 1918, six-year-old Alba Shoopman is believed to have been buried at the cemetery, although she does not have an identifiable grave. She was the daughter of Stokley Shoopman and his wife, Anna Ramsey. Her death certificate notes that she was buried at Robbins.
Other children of Stokley Shoopman included Birtha Lee Dishman, Lawrence Cambon Shoopman, Walter R. Shoopman, Ruby Jackson, and Ralph K. Shoopman. Ruby was buried at the cemetery in 1947 when she died of cervical cancer at age 37.
Dempsey Younger Massengale was buried at the cemetery in 1920. He was the husband of Lecta Gentry. They lived nearby on Monticello Pike.
Sarah Catherine Shumate Shoopman was buried at the cemetery in 1921. Following the death of her first husband, Jake Shoopman, she remarried to William Shoopman, his brother. Jake Shoopman was murdered in 1877 at the age of 22 during a Christmas Day robbery of a family-owned grocery store in Kentucky.
William was also buried at Shoopman Cemetery in 1936, and shares a stone with Sarah.
Just two months after Sarah’s death in 1921, 19-year-old Clarence Shoopman died and was buried at the family cemetery. He died of tuberculosis. He was another of the children of Stokley Shoopman and Anna Ramsey.
James Edwardd Stewart, an infant, was buried at the cemetery in January 1922. He was the son of Robert Lee Stewart (1885-1954) and Ethel Lilly Williams (1887-1971).
Caroline Rich Shoopman was next to be buried at the cemetery, in 1926, followed by Ella Shoopman in 1934. She was 51 at the time of her death, and was the wife of Joseph Russell Shoopman — son of William Shoopman, and grandson of Joseph and Caroline Rich Shoopman, who would later be buried at the cemetery in 1965.
The Reed family
In November 1936, 14-year-old Elmer Ashbury Reed was buried at the cemetery. He was the son of Manus Reed and Bettie Wilder. Manus was from the Reed family at Mountain View, the son of Wiley Reed and Sophie Ellis.
In 1940, infant Bobbie Rene Reed was buried at the cemetery. It isn’t clear what the connection was, though this may have been a sibling to Elmer Reed.
Manus was buried at the cemetery in 1959, and Bettie in 1968. Later, their son Robert Eugene Reed — a World War II veteran — was buried at the cemetery in 1987, and another son, Walter Wayne Reed, was buried there in 2000.
The cemetery today
Burials occur infrequently at Shoopman Cemetery today, though the cemetery remains well-maintained and taken care of.
The last person buried there was Paul Shoopman in 2007. His mother, Assie Shoopman, was buried at the cemetery in 1997. She was the daughter of Frank Shoopman and Liza Mason. Her father was buried at the cemetery in 1929, and was a nephew to Joseph Shoopman and Caroline Rich.
Only three burials — Robert Reed, Walter Reed and Paul Shoopman — have occurred at the cemetery since 1970.
Ruby Shoopman Jackson, 1910-1947
Dempsey Y. Massengale, 1856-1920
Caywood Miller, 1893-1913
Emily Pemberton Miller, 1867-1925
Haywood Miller, 1901-1907
Oliver Miller, 1869-1946
Violet Miller, 1908-1908
Florence Morgan Mote, 1904-1955
Hannah Potter Owens, N/A-N/A
Howard C. Pendergraph, 1894-1945
Nannie M. Pendergraph, 1894-N/A
Bettie Wilder Reed, 1889-1968
Bobbie R. Reed, 1940-1940
Elmer A. Reed, 1922-1936
Manus Reed, 1886-1959
Robert E. Reed, 1915-1987
Walter W. Reed, 1929-2000
Marley D. Sexton, 1888-1953
Alba Shoopman, 1912-1918
Almira Shoopman, 1871-1895
Anna Ramsey Shoopman, 1877-1948
Clarence R. Shoopman, 1902-1921
Ella Shoopman, 1883-1934
J. Stokley Shoopman, 1877-1953
John R. Shoopman, 1876-1965
Joseph Shoopman Sr., 1830-1900
Joseph R. Shoopman, 1876-1965
Caroline Rich Shoopman, 1838-1926
Paul Shoopman, 1940-2007
Ruby Shoopman, 1910-1947
Sarah Shumate Shoopman, 1855-1921
William Shoopman, 1852-1936
James E. Stewart, 1922-1922
Cora S. Taylor, 1874-1940
William B. Taylor, 1872-1937
Lee Wilder, 1853-1938
Marshall C. Wilder, 1883-1906
Mary Shoopman Wilder, 1856-1927
W. Press Wilder, 1886-1910
Louise Zachary, 1922-1970
A pre-Christmas hike in the Big South Fork
The days before Christmas have a rhythm all their own in the Big South Fork. The crowds of summer are long gone, the leaf-peepers of October only a memory. What remains is a quiet, hushed landscape—one that feels like it’s holding its breath, waiting for winter to fully arrive. A pre-Christmas hike here isn’t just an outdoor outing; it’s a small pilgrimage into the stillness of the season.
The trailhead greets you with the sharp scent of cold air and leaf mold, a smell that only the Cumberland Plateau can make so familiar. Frost clings to the rhododendron leaves like powdered sugar, and the sandstone bluffs glow faintly under the pale winter sun. With every step, bootprints crunch into the frozen duff, echoing softly through the empty hardwoods.
Even the river seems quieter this time of year. Down along the banks of the Big South Fork, the water slides past with a slow, wintry confidence, black-green and glassy except where it buckles over submerged rock. A kingfisher rattles from a low branch, and somewhere deeper in the gorge a raven calls—one of the few voices that breaks the silence.
The beauty of a pre-Christmas hike isn’t found in bold colors or loud scenery. It’s in the subtleties: the way the laurel thickets stay defiantly green when everything else sleeps, the delicate lacework of ice along a seep on the rocks, the faint chiming of icicles breaking loose in the warming sun. It’s in the breath you can see and the peace you can feel.
There’s also a certain gratitude that settles in on a hike like this. Maybe it’s the season, or maybe it’s the land itself, but as you climb toward an overlook — Angel Falls, East Rim, or any of the bluffline vistas that watch over the gorge — you can’t help but pause. Below lies a rugged, ancient canyon, wrapped in the muted colors of December, a natural cathedral preparing for the quietest holiday of the year.
By the time you return to the trailhead, the shadows have lengthened and the air has cooled again. Christmas lights will be waiting back home, along with family, warmth, and celebration. But for a short time, you’ve walked through a wilder kind of Advent — one marked not by carols, but by wind through bare branches; not by candles, but by the soft winter glow on stone and river.
In the Big South Fork, even the days before Christmas feel like a gift.
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◼️ Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
◼️ Tuesday: Echoes from the Past (stories of our history)
◼️ Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
◼️ Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
◼️ Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
◼️ Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)