NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Often, important history can be pretty close to home, right in the middle of our neighborhoods. Sometimes people don't know it's there. One group is hard at work right now to tell some history in Bellevue.
The Old DeMoss Cemetery is in the River Plantation neighborhood of Bellevue, the burial place of Abraham DeMoss. DeMoss lived from 1753 to 1820.
"Abraham DeMoss fought in the American Revolution," said Clare Baker. "It's the beginning of Bellevue when Abraham DeMoss settled Bellevue. He is the reason Bellevue is named Bellevue. He said, he was French, 'this is belle vue', which means beautiful view. Bellevue has stuck all these years."
Baker is a descendant of DeMoss.
"It'd be six greats back," she said.
Now, that's not something she's always known. It was a discovery through Ancestry.com. It was a surprise. Well, there was this one clue.
You may have seen the cabin at Red Caboose Park. DeMoss built it and also lived here. When Baker was growing up, this cabin was on her grandparents' property.
Baker is a lifelong Bellevue resident and a retired school teacher. Now, she's teaching everyone about her family ties to Bellevue.
Baker's the president of the Bellevue Harpeth Historic Association. An anonymous donor has given the group the money to restore the front stone wall of the Old DeMoss Cemetery. Baker's brought in landscape contractor Jonathan Norris to do that.
"If it's not from the 1800s, we want to put it to the side and haul it away," Norris said, picking up rocks in the wall.
Baker doesn't know how old the wall itself is, but it's old enough that it's weathered over the decades.
She said it's time to bring more focus here with the stories the cemetery tells.
"The first grave we found is from 1810," Baker said, walking through the cemetery.
She wonders if some of the stones are grave markers from earlier than that.
"Could be," Baker said. "I honestly don't know. I mean. How would you know?"
Baker said this wall surrounds an area where more than 70 people are buried who all died before the Civil War.
"It's sort of mind-boggling at the beginning when you think you can trace your roots in Bellevue 200 years," she nodded. "We want Bellevue to remember their history and to cherish it. This is your history. This is where it started. It's important."
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