The Carney Cemetery

Awesome Demonbreun News

I want to kiss Bridgett on the mouth and then kiss this very moment on the mouth. So, as you know, I’m working on the fake Nashville ghost stories for October and I was inspired by a set of shoulders I saw the other day to write a story about why the Devil lives here, on and off.

It’s a long story and involves Elizabeth Bennett, who was Timothy Demonbreun’s lover/mistress/country wife.

So, of course, I ask Bridgett all about it,  because, America, there are few historical things about the mid-South that she cannot explain to me in a manner I can understand.  And, of course, in the back of my mind is the wondering I have about why there are Demonbreuns in the Barnes cemetery and in that cool little cemetery I found on Bull Run Road.

Well, Bridgett sends me back this long, awesome explaination, which I will not republish here so as not to undermine the sales for her future book, “Things B. Finds Fascinating.” Yes, it will have a very small market–me and a handful of academic libraries–but with the way scholarly publishing is going, that will be considered a smashing success and she’ll get a story in the Chronicle of Higher Education and everything. Other scholars will egg her house in envy.

But in it she mentions that Bennett ran a tavern in Germantown. I have written her back asking for clarification. The Memphis Germantown? That seems unlikely as that Germantown didn’t exist until the railroad went through. The Germantown that is a neighborhood in Nashville?  Possible, but I think that started being called Germantown towards the middle and end of the 19th Century.  So, what Germantown does that leave us?

Folks, I suspect Bennett was right up the ridge where I buy my groceries, where what is now Clarksville Pike crosses Old Hickory Boulevard!

But that’s not the cool part.  No the cool part is that Timothy Demonbreun’s wikipedia entry mentions a monument to Demonbreun that is in the Carney Cemetery in Ashland City, which is on Bennett’s old farm.

Well, Ashland City only by nearest city. That cemetery is on little Marrowbone Road, which is just the next valley up from Bull Run Road (where there are Demonbreuns buried) which is just the next road up from OHB (down which, in the Bend, there are Demonbreuns buried). And, clearly, that’s why. They stayed near Grandma.

I’m going to look right this second.

Also, I’m interviewing a cactus, but that’s neither here nor there.