Dorsey Cemetery
If ever the graves of the past call out for remembrance, this obscure little cemetery would be the place. It is hidden away down the mountainside below Lower Mount Cammerer Trail out of Cosby. For every answer we could piece together, a dozen new questions, vague and fragmented, whispered in our ears. We felt profoundly connected to the past, and profoundly unable to reach beyond the present.
The day we visited, the air was perfectly still. If night can be described as pitch black, this day was pitch quiet. Now and then a bird broke the silence. We can almost see Delia Dorsey sitting by the graves, listening to this same silence. First she buries her three-month-old, then less than three years later she buries her husband. On our visit, the trees were bare, and one might imagine Delia and Mayfield bundled and braced against the cold January wind while they commit a child to the frozen ground. From the epigram "My husband," we surmise Delia intended to grow old with Mayfield, not bury him young.
GoSmokies member Linda Huff did some research and contributed the following on Mayfield Dorsey:
According to his marriage certificate he married Delia McMahan on Oct 9, 1913 in Cocke Co., Tn. In the 1900 Census he was recorded as living in Civil District 12 of Cocke, Tn. It showed his date of birth as May 1892 [not 1894], but as we all know lots of times this info was given by neighbors, friends or family members so the birth dates on Census are not always correct. This Census showed his Father & Mother as Dedrick & Mary M Dorsey. It also showed a total of 10 living in the household. Mayfield's WWI Draft Registration Card, which was dated shortly before his death, states that he was of medium height, blue eyes and black hair living in precinct 6, Cocke Co. It also showed his birthplace as Newport, Tn and the same birthdate as his tombstone.
These are the lives that beg to be remembered, that bring up so many questions. Where is Delia's grave? Is she buried here beneath a stone that no longer remains? Did she live a long and satisfying life raising surviving children we don't know about? Did she move away when the new National Park bought her out, wrenched away from these graves? Did she eventually remarry and is buried beside her second husband?
And what of Mayfield? How does a young father die at age twenty-four? Illness or epidemic? Accident? A World War I casualty? Something more sinister in these remote hollows? Was Wilse's death sudden, or did the parents endure the drawn-out lingering of a sickly newborn they daily prayed would rally?
There are at least four additional graves in this cemetery, their memories scratched into crumbling fieldstones with even less information to go on than the Dorseys.
We offer remembrance, but sometimes there is nothing to remember.