Orange County North Carolina Cemeteries Other NC County Cemeteries
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207    GATTIS, WILLIAM, SR. FAMILY [Kenmore Road]

Location - At the rear of 712 Kenmore Road in Chapel Hill, Lot 4 of the Lake Forest Estates development.

Coordinates: 35d 56m 55.3s N; 79d 02m 15.2s W Click here for Online Maps

A small portion of the cemetery is located at the rear of Lot 3, 708 Kenmore Road. (The survey previously catalogued this cemetery as "Unidentified - Shady Lawn Road").

Survey - The cemetery was originally surveyed in August 1974 by Mrs. Engstrom. She was not able to identify any burials or the origin of the cemetery. She described it as follows:

"The cemetery contains rough stones with no identification mark of any kind. It has become a playground for neighborhood children who have torn down the walls and moved stones to such an extent that in Aug, 1974, it has been almost impossible to survey it as a burial ground. Stones are now scattered over a considerable area and few remain in place. Plat indicates that the cemetery was evidently 40' square with walls approximately 3' wide and 2' tall. Base stones at the corners are still in place. The cemetery plat seems to have contained 3 rows of graves with 7 or 8 graves to the row. It is possible that there may also be 1 row of graves outside the east wall. Depressions are indicated on the plat, and stones still firm in the ground are marked in black. The deepest depression is that of grave #3 in row 1, probably the oldest of the rows. The entire cemetery is covered with periwinkle which has escaped outside the walls." (See Engstrom plat HERE).

Update (2019) - In November 2018 Mr. Karl G. Kachergis notified Allen Dew that he had visited this cemetery several times as a child before the development of the Lake Forest Estates area was too far advanced. He identified a gravestone that lay on the ground in the cemetery at that time but said it later disappeared. That information enabled research to document the origin and history of this cemetery, and was much appreciated. (Researchers were Milton Forsyth, assisted by Margaret Jones and Patti Smith, who located an obscure and important map in the county records).

The cemetery dates from the second quarter of 1800 when William Gattis Sr (the older of several persons named William Gattis who lived in the Chapel Hill area) purchased land from the Davis family, to which he was related by marriage, and other landowners. Following his death in June or July 1854, his will specified that his property was left to his wife Elizabeth for the remainder of her life, and then was to go to his daughter Elizabeth Jane, called "Jane." Upon Jane's death, the land was to be sold and the proceeds distributed equally among his children (or, as it happened, their descendants, obvious from the distribution list). The reason Jane was to inherit the property is illuminated by entries in census records that show Jane was mentally handicapped. In the event, nothing was found about her after the 1870 census when she was living with her mother and was age 36.

William Gattis Sr's estate was settled at the time of his death in 1854 and after Elizabeth's death sometime in 1872 by his son John Wesley Gattis. The 125 acres of land ("more or less") was purchased by another son, James R. Gattis, for $300, and the proceeds of the estate distributed by 1874 (see Orange County Will Book G, p 55-56, and the probate file under William Gattis Sr's name in the Orange County Probate Files, both available online).

James R. Gattis took out a mortgage on 31 Dec 1872 to purchase the property, to be repaid on/before 1 Jan 1874 (Orange County Deed Book 41 p 228). While the metes and bounds of the property are not given in this document, this information is contained in a deed he executed when he sold this property out of the family to James Brockwell, a local resident, on 28 Dec 1874 (Orange County Deed Book 43 p 47). It was based on a survey conducted on 10 Dec 1874 by Thomas Wilson (unfortunately this survey was not found in the county records - but see a plot of the property HERE). The size was listed in deeds variously as 125, 128 1/4 or 108 1/4 acres.

Significantly, in the documents beginning in the 31 Dec 1872 mortgage and through the 1889 sale are statements setting aside one-half acre of the sold property as a family cemetery. The land passed from James Brockwell to a Chapel Hill real estate dealer, David McCauley, on 27 Feb 1889 (Orange County DB 52 p 151-152). That deed identified the land as being known as "...the 'Briar,' William Gattis land..." It was then owned by real estate dealers until it was developed beginning in the 1950s. The lands in the Eastwood Lake area were combined into an over 350 acre parcel that became the Lake Forest Estates and other developments. Clearly over this time the origin of the cemetery became obscure and its existence as a separate entity on the property was ignored. However, its location was indicated on US Geological Survey maps in 1946 and later.

The land we are concerned with was surveyed and divided into plots for Section 4 of the Lake Forest Estates in November 1960 (OC Plat Book 9 p 32. See an enlarged image of the 1960 plat cemetery area HERE). This survey included a delineation of the cemetery boundary between Lot 3 and Lot 4 (see Orange County DB 203 p 384 "Tract 2" for the precise metes and bounds). To accommodate the approximately 1700 square-foot rock-walled cemetery there was a "kink" in the lot line that was subsequently altered to straighten the line between the two lots (See Orange County DB 203 p 384, as above, and DB 217 p 37). The result being that the major portion of the cemetery is in Lot 4, while a small portion is in Lot 3, as mentioned in the "Location" description. And it effectively obliterated what was left of the cemetery boundary. Today deeds for the two lots refer to "part of" or something similar to account for this revision. (See the current layout of the lots with Lot 4 indicated in red, the original lot line as a dashed line, and height contours indicating the cemetery was located at the highest point in the area HERE).

The two known burials are listed below.

1. Gattis, Elizabeth Davis   (b. Abt 1795 - d. 1872)
Wife of William Gattis Sr. Daughter of John W. Davis. Sister of Wyatt Davis. Although no record of her burial exists other than a listing of her funeral expenses in the William Gattis Sr probate records, this family cemetery is on the land she occupied at her death and is clearly the cemetery where she would have been buried.
2. Gattis, William, Sr.   (b. Abt 1790 - d. Jun-Jul 1854)
Husband of Elizabeth Davis Gattis. His stone was probably the one seen in the cemetery in the 1950s; now gone. His relationship, if any, to other Gattis families in the area, esp. descendants of the settler John Gattis (b. bef. 1735, Ireland - d. 10 May 1810, Orange Co., NC) was not determined.