Mt. Zion Cemetary decoration day Saturday
The evening will be capped with the annual cakewalk, with all the proceeds from the day’s events going for maintenance and general upkeep of the cemetery grounds.
A historic hemlock tree, which has stood at the cemetery an estimated 160 years, survived storm damage earlier this summer. The tree was split in half by high winds, with several large limbs falling on monuments. The damage from the June storm has since been cleared, but only half of the historic hemlock remains.
The following article was penned by Dr. Joe Nunley in 1988 and provides a historical account of the Mt. Zion hemlock:
Mt. Zion’s Lonesome Pine
‘Please plant this heart of mine underneath the lonesome pine on the hill.’
Do you remember that line for an old, old song? It was made popular in a movie of the early 1930s called ‘Trail of the Lonesome Pine.’ It starred Henry Fonda, Sylvia Sydney and Fred McMurray. It may have been the first technicolor movie Cowan Oldham ever brought to McMinnville.
The song caught on in the Mt. Zion community. Our cemetery is draped over a small hill and at the highest point of the hill stands a majestic evergreen tree.
It is the only tree on the place and it’s really not a pine. At least it’s not one like we ordinarily see. It is some sort of a hemlock or a spruce. The song was a sad one and the cemetery, though a necessary part of the community, evokes sadness. It was easy to associate that song with a burial, both yesterday and for tomorrow.
It has been more than 50 years since that particular association was first made. The tree was a focal point at that time and today. It stand sturdy, tall and more majestic than ever.
There is no other tree like it within miles. Where did it come from and how did it get to that hilltop?
Records are necessary. They have always been used to protect a sense of legality as the human race tried civilizing itself. Record keeping did not explode into full bloom as it has become in the latter half of the 20th century. That business evolved slowly.
There is no record that says, ‘On this day, the Mt. Zion Cemetery is established.’ The Methodists don’t even know for sure when their church at Mt. Zion was established but they think it was in the 1820s.
Sometimes records have to be built on what someone remembers, or maybe what they remember that someone else remembered. We have a story about the origin of our Lonesome Pine.
Frank Stotts was a teenager and his brother, Monroe, a little older in the early 1850s. They lived on the farm of their parents, which lay between the mountain and Mt. Zion Road.
Burials had already begun in the plot of land west of where the Methodist Church then stood. Monroe Stotts, according to Frank, said that if he and his family were to be buried there he wanted the place shaded by a respectable tree.
During the winter he set off on the long trip to find such a tree. He crossed the low gap at Rogers Hollow, traveled across Northcutt’s Cove to Collins River, up the river to Savage Creek, and into the rugged wilderness of Savage Gulf. Somewhere in there he dug three saplings and then, after the long trip back, he transplanted them in Mt. Zion Cemetery. Only the one on the crest of the hill survived.