African-American burial ground on the campus of historic HBCU Knoxville College, holding ~190 graves including those of early Black doctors and formerly-enslaved Knoxvillians; local lore reports the cry of a disembodied girl identified by researcher Laura Still as six-year-old Mamie Hampton, the cemetery's first burial in 1902.
901 Knoxville College Drive, Knoxville, TN 37921
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free to visit; respect the burial ground as an active African-American historical cemetery. Knoxville Walking Tours runs guided history visits.
Access
Limited Access
Uneven ground typical of historic cemetery; many fallen and damaged stones; vegetation; no improved paths
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1900 · Burial site of formerly enslaved African Americans · Knoxville College HBCU campus heritage · Burial site of formerly enslaved by President Andrew Johnson · Early Knoxville Black professional and civic leadership · Visit Knoxville Major Black Cemeteries Driving Tour
Knoxville College was founded in 1875 by the United Presbyterian Church of North America, growing out of a mission school established in Knoxville in 1864 by R.J. Creswell to educate the city's free and formerly enslaved Black population. The college is one of the oldest historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the South and was a member of the United Negro College Fund. By the late nineteenth century the college occupied a 39-acre campus in West Knoxville.
The cemetery now known as Freedmen's Mission Historic Cemetery sits at the corner of Booker and College on the Knoxville College campus and was associated with the college's surrounding Black community from its earliest decades. Its exact founding date is uncertain — Wikipedia gives a range of 1877 to 1900 — but the oldest currently marked headstone dates to 1904. The cemetery has also been known historically as Knoxville College Cemetery, College Street Cemetery, and First United Presbyterian Church Cemetery; the present 'Freedmen's Mission Historic Cemetery' designation was adopted in May 2012.
The cemetery contains approximately 190 known graves. Notable interments include several of Knoxville's early Black professionals — among them the town's first Black physicians; physician and alderman Henry M. Green; James, Tennessee's first Black postal clerk and a founder of the local NAACP; and members of the Casler, Beck, and Green families. The cemetery is also one of the documented resting places of several individuals who had been formerly enslaved by Andrew Johnson, the 17th U.S. President and a Tennessean before and after his presidency.
By the early twenty-first century the cemetery had suffered from decades of neglect and vandalism as descendants of those buried there moved away from Knoxville. Preservation efforts including documentation by Laura Still and other local historians have worked to recover the inscriptions and stories of those interred. The cemetery is featured on Knoxville's Major Black Cemeteries driving tour through Visit Knoxville.
Sources
Local historian Laura Still — a longtime Knoxville author and walking-tour operator whose 2014 book 'A Haunted History of Knoxville' is a regional bestseller — investigated the persistent reports of a child's crying voice in the Freedmen's Mission cemetery. Working with Knoxville College Director of Communications Robert Booker and other collaborators (including a researcher named Minchey credited in the UT Daily Beacon coverage), Still located near the center of the dilapidated cemetery a stone marking the grave of six-year-old Mamie Hampton, who died in 1902 — predating the cemetery's other documented headstones and consistent with Still's research finding that a body had been interred there before the cemetery officially opened.
According to Still's reporting, Mamie Hampton was an African-American girl visiting Knoxville with her mother when she died suddenly. She was buried at what would become the Freedmen's Mission Cemetery as its first occupant. The lore associated with the cemetery — the cry of a disembodied girl, sometimes heard by visitors and walking-tour participants — is thus uniquely anchored to a documented child's burial whose details Still has reconstructed from on-site research and historical records.
This is an unusual kind of haunting story: the named, documented anchor is not a famous person attached after the fact but a forgotten child whose grave Still helped recover. It is also a sensitive narrative — the death of a six-year-old in 1902, in a cemetery whose existence emerged from the post-Civil War mission to educate freed African Americans. The story should be received and shared as an act of historical recovery and respect for Mamie Hampton and the broader Black Knoxville community buried at the site, not as entertainment.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Walk the grounds of one of Knoxville's most important African-American burial sites, located on the campus of historic HBCU Knoxville College. The cemetery holds approximately 190 known graves including early Black doctors, teachers, and individuals formerly enslaved by U.S. President Andrew Johnson. Knoxville Walking Tours (Laura Still, author of 'A Haunted History of Knoxville') runs respectful guided visits.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Portland, ME
Established in 1668, Eastern Cemetery is Portland's oldest historic site and oldest landscape, occupying roughly seven acres at the base of Munjoy Hill. The grounds hold an estimated 4,000 marked graves and an additional ~3,000 unmarked burials. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 and has been preserved and interpreted by the nonprofit Spirits Alive since 2006.
Knoxville, TN
First Presbyterian Church Cemetery is the oldest graveyard in Knoxville, reserved by city founder James White and surveyor Charles McClung in 1791 and officially platted in 1795. It contains the graves of William Blount, James White, Hugh Lawson White, Samuel Carrick, and other early Knoxville citizens. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.
Nashville, TN
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