On 30 May 1845, Joshua Shipley (owner of Shipley's Ferry) and Roland Perry Gott (a wealthy land owner) sold land to a group of Methodists for $10. The land was to be used as a site for a church and school house. The selected site was covered in cedar trees and when the one room log cabin church was built it was named "Cedar Grove Methodist Church." A cemetery site was laid out next to the church on a spot where burials had been made prior to 1845. The cemetery abutted Shipley Ferry Road and the road to Jonesboro, TN at the corner of what was once known as Gott's Crossroad; and through which Brown's Creek flowed. Today the cemetery no longer abuts Shipley Ferry Road as a section of the cemetery land was sold and Interstate 81 was constructed on the parcel. And this section of the road to Jonesboro, TN is now known as Lebanon Road.

The church has used radar imaging to map a plat of the cemetery and have located many unmarked graves. While the earliest known burial in this cemetery was in 1843, the local lore is that it was used well before that date for the burial of Indians, paupers, and slaves. And during the Civil War it was used for the burial of at least one unknown Union soldier.

Now take this with a grain of salt but there is the local story of the "Ghost Feathers." Every year on Memorial Day the church will decorate many of the graves for which there is no local relative with flowers. The day after Memorial Day some of the unmarked graves will be marked with white feathers. It is said that they mark the Indian graves. One educated professional man said that for many years they have tried to catch the perpetrator who marks the graves with white feathers; but have never caught one. But in this land of Chief Junaluska, who is credited by the Methodist for having the New Testament of the Bible translated into Cherokee; people tend to have belief in Indian spirits.

The original trustees of "Cedar Grove Methodist Church" were Andrew Coin, James Cox, Adijah Bacon, Alfred Duncan, and Jonathan Buchellow; many of whom are buried in the church cemetery. But by 1888 "Cedar Grove Methodist Church" had outgrown its size, or as some believe it may have been destroyed by fire. Whatever the reason a new church building was needed as well as a new school house. And in 1888 Patton Mitchel had been selected as the builder for the new church. Martha Bell, a teacher in the old log church, contributed the first $5 towards the construction of the new church and school house. By 1890 the new church was finished and renamed to the "Mount Lebanon Methodist Episcopal Church." The cemetery was maintained by the church congregation and renamed to Mt Lebanon Cemetery.

It must have been about the same time that "Gott's Crossroads" and the surrounding area including the Gott Crossroads Post Office came to be known as the "Mount Lebanon." Situated directly across Lebanon Road from the Mount Lebanon Methodist Church and cemetery were a blacksmith shop, the Gott and Bacon dry good store, and the post office. There were other merchants operating in the area but the nature of their businesses are no longer be known.

Time progressed and the area increased in population with first the Kodak Plant, later Tennessee Eastman Division of Eastman Kodak, and still later spun off as Eastman Chemical Company. Today Eastman or the Big E, as it is still locally known, is a $10B company. Land was needed to house the growing population servicing the chemical plant. And when the Mount Lebanon Methodist Church had grown to the point where a new church building was needed, the church sold part of their land to the housing developers to help pay for the brick church. At about the same time, the local community had grown in size to the point where a new name was need for the rapidly growing community and the name of Colonial Heights came into being. So when the new church was constructed it was named Colonial Heights United Methodist Church. But the cemetery retained its name of Mt. Lebanon Cemetery as evidenced by signs on the church cemetery entrance.

That new brick church was burned to the ground soon after completion. But by the following Sunday pledges were made to build yet another chuch on the site of the destroyed church. The church grew in size with the addition of a recent ministry center and is undergoing a revival. But still there is a strong connection between the church, the community which has passed the farm land through generations, and the Mt Lebanon Cemetery. It is still an active cemetery for the local community that it has served for over 180 years. These ties are evidenced by again using the pulpit built by Charles Bacon (he himself is buried in the church yard) for the 1890 Mt Lebanon Methodist Church as the altar for the current church.

The Mt Lebanon Cemetery is regularly mown and maintained. When part of the cemetery land was sold for the construction of Interstate 81, the money was put into a perpetual care trust fund for the cemetery. A cemetery trustee committee of the Colonial Heights United Methodist Church administers the trust fund and provides the care of the cemetery.