Spencer Clack memorials by the Little Pigeon River - Sevierville Part 2

I drove west from Asheville NC to Tennessee, which is the other side of some old Appalachian Mountains...to Sevierville, and Knoxville.  Part of the trip was to meet my son and his family as they traveled perpendicular to my journey (Ohio to Florida) for their vacation on the beach.

So I had some time while they were held up in traffic in Kentucky and I stopped in Sevierville and drove around a bit.

There's I-40 at the top of the map, going south to north at this point, but I mainly traveled east to west.

I stopped at the Sevierville Visitor Center.  What a smart gal I am, and got some good maps showing where maybe Spencer Clack's grave was.  The clerk didn't know anything about the little park where the original log church had been and the grave marker for Spencer Clack still was.  But she knew there was a small park that was located by the river and a highway by-pass.  That sounded right to me, because I'd been zooming along that bypass and saw a sign about a cemetery when I went through the town about 25 years ago. It was on the left however!

Newer sign designating the Cemetery park on the by-pass.

And on Ancestry, Spencer Clack has 2 memorial sites with pictures.  So I hoped to see for myself!

Though there was a LOT of traffic, it kept moving and each stop light was given a number.  So I was going to light Number 15.6, turn up Main St. and pass the by-pass...and the pink area was the probably place of the park.  But it was still on the left side of a 5 lane highway.  So I played around with several more right and left turns in circles, and eventually was coming back down Main St. to turn right onto a little no-name street, and there it was!

 Bridge over the Little Pigeon River on other side of manicured park.

 I see the 4 markers at first...

And then notice more markers, this is a real cemetery!

Spencer Clack's marker, as it is in 2018.

The cemetery has been kept up, and someone has used Round Up around each marker to kill all the grass...but it's probably safer than using a weed-eater.  We just won't think of the run off into the river just yards away!

This shot is posted on Ancestry, supposedly a carving of Spencer Clack's face on the tombstone.  When I looked at the shards of the stone behind the broken vertical piece, they seemed to have various layers, as if it had been repaired with concrete and then broke apart.  But the face is definitely gone now.

The marker at the base was added by Joe Sharp, who requested it from the US Government to honor a Revolutionary War Hero.  (Joe Sharp was an active genealogist in Sevierville.) And  now I understand that Spencer Clack was in the Virginia Militia, rather than the Continental Army.

I don't know any dates he served in the military, and perhaps nobody does.  But he came across the mountains without benefit of the highway I just traveled, from Virginia into this area when it was wilderness. It is known that he was part of the group trying to form the State of Franklin out of the western wilds of North Carolina, but it didn't succeed, and eventually the western part of NC became Tennessee.  Spencer took part in that also.

This little pocket park tries to give a bit of memorial, though I couldn't read any of the other old stone's inscriptions, except 2 newer ones flat on the ground.  But there were good markers around the park to let me know what was there and why.

Spencer Clack was my 5 times great grandfather.  His daughter Catharine married Rev. Elijah Rogers, and their son Micajah moved his family to Texas in the early 1800s.

But back to the park...according to Ancestry, Mary Beavers Clack, Spencer's wife, is also buried in this cemetery.  But I didn't find a stone marker that was near him with her name, but it could have been any of them since names were illegible.

 Broken marker in foreground is Spencer Clack's.  The other marker doesn't say whose it is.

 Upon the park's rededication in 2009 more amenities and signs were added (by the Spencer Clack Chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution, and others)

A central flag pole with a circle of benches was added with dedication and appreciation of those who contributed to it.  Among the names, at the bottom is Joseph Sharp, who had worked to get Spencer Clack's newer marker installed.

I'll finish describing this little park in another post...it wasn't mobbed with people coming to see it...and with Pigeon Forge, Dollywood, and Gatlinburg right up the road, I wasn't surprised!