Captain John "Jack" Taylor lost his first wife Mary (Smith) about 1807 in Granville County, North Carolina, and he lost his second wife Lucy Ann (Lyne) February 23, 1827 also in Granville. In the fall of 1833 Captain Jack and some of his family from both of his marriages and other relatives moved to Tipton County, Tennessee and settled on land he purchased. The cemetery was soon established on the property with the burial of Captain Jack Taylor's grandchildren, children of his son William Anderson Taylor and his wife Sally A (Jones): Lucy Jones Taylor died December 16, 1833, aged 11 months and 15 days, and Junius M Taylor died Nov 6, 1835 aged 7 years 11 months, with their mother Sally A (Jones) Taylor dying in between on Christmas Day 1834. In 1839 William Anderson Taylor, who lived on adjacent property, married Martha Wallace Nash Bland and they had three daughters though Martha Eliza died June 1842. William Anderson Taylor died December 22, 1846 and like his first wife and his three young children, was buried in this cemetery.

Capt. Jack Taylor offered the home and property to his daughter Mary "Pretty Polly" Hunt and her husband Major Thomas Taylor Hunt who were in Granville, North Carolina. They had two children, Sarah Anderson "Sallie" Hunt and Elizabeth Taylor "Bettie" Hunt. In a letter dated July 25, 1844, Sallie wrote to Memucan Hunt, brother to her father Thomas T Hunt. "Dearest Uncle, … I do not suppose that you have heard of our arrival in Tennessee. We have been in the country about four months. We will [make] Tennessee our permanent place of residence. We left all of our friends and relations in North Carolina well…. Grandpa has presented Mama with a tract of land…. I go to school 6 miles from home in Fayette. I go to school every Monday with cousin Virginia Taylor. I have not been to school in nearly three years before in consequence of our expectation of moving to the west…. My dearest Uncle, visit us as soon as you can conveniently do so."

After the arrival of Thomas T and his family the property was known as the Hunt place.

Captain Jack's niece and nephew communicated about the Hunts in a letter dated May 11th, 1849, Tipton, from Frances Anderson Taylor to her first cousin George Anderson Taylor who was in school in Chapel Hill, North Carolina :"Dear George,…. Our Cousin Memucan Hunt has just left the neighborhood for Texas; it is thought he is courting William A. Taylor's widow he visited her several times during his stay at his brother's. Cousin Tom has entirely recovered of the California fever, and now has a slight touch of the Texas fever his brother Muke has offered to make him a present of a track of land if he will go and live upon it where he can make three hundred dollars to the hand making sugar."

Memucan Hunt was a diplomat and politician in Texas, including at one time Brigadier General, Secretary of the Navy of Texas, and Texas' minister at Washington; Hunt County Texas was named after him. After the annexation of Texas he applied for compensation for his losses due to his financially backing the endeavor and the legislature approved, granting him land. He obtained a charter for a railroad from Galveston to Red Rivers and traveled in search of investors. While in New Orleans he became ill causing him to return to Galveston. His doctors advised him to go to a higher altitude so he went to visit his brother, Major Thomas T. Hunt in Tipton County, Tennessee.

Insight into the last illness of Memucan (Muke to his family) Hunt is provided by local sources. The Somervell family has passed down the story that William A Somervell, General Hunt's first cousin, sent a slave named Stephen to wait on Memucan Hunt. The elderly Stephen was perturbed by the amount of profanity utter by the General, and he reported to his master, "General Hunt don't have no bolish." [polish.]

In a letter dated Tipton Co., June 1856, Mary Goodloe Somervell Taylor wrote to Mary Ann Taylor Blackwell, both first cousins of the General: "Dear Cousin Mary,…"The Dr. that is with Muke Hunt at this time, says that he can not live more than two weeks. His body is very much swollen and he is very low."

On June 5, 1856 General Memucan Hunt died at the home of his brother Thomas T Hunt. Though there is no gravestone for the General in the family cemetery on the property, it is highly likely he is buried there, and highly unlikely that he is buried anywhere else. Queries with the Texas State Library and Archives, Rosenberg Library (Galveston & Texas History Center), Texas State Historical Association and Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas – Austin, have not uncovered conflicting burial information. Though others have claimed he was buried in the Montgomery New Cemetery in Texas, the above centers do not have any information to support his burial in the state of Texas, and logic argues against a burial in that state. In 1856 the railroad system was infantile as shown by the 1856 map at the Library of Congress. (https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3701p.rr000300/). Highly unlikely during the heat of summer that anyone in June of 1856 would transport a corpse six hundred miles from Tennessee to Texas, especially if there were any concern that the disease would be spread. The Montgomery New Cemetery in Montgomery County Texas was established 1868, twelve years after his death and the historical marker notes that the wife of Memucan Hunt was buried in the cemetery, but any claim that he were interred there is conspicuously absent from the sign.

Records from Old Trinity in the Fields Parish document some burials in this cemetery, but only a few markers survived: those for the William Anderson Taylor family listed above, plus a large ornate but toppled gravestone for Virginia Triplett Taylor the daughter of William Anderson Taylor and his first wife Sally A (Jones). Virginia married her cousin Richard B. Somervell and they were the grandparents of General Brehon Burke Somervell, a noted general from World War II who was largely responsible for the building of the Pentagon.

In the 1880s, this land was purchased by a former slave Smith Fed Maclin. He and his descendants owned this land until very recently.

History courtesy of

--The Honorable John Marshall, local historian, with permission

-- Marshall, John. The Somervell-Taylor Letters. Memphis, Tennessee: John Marshall, 2010.

-- Worthen, Mary Frances Clement. Family Records from Old Trinity-in-the-Fields Parish Register. Mason, Tennessee. 1984.

-- Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas – Austin

-- Rosenberg Library (Galveston & Texas History Center)

--Texas State Historical Association

-- Texas State Library and Archives