TVA Cemetery-Relocation Program

Subject: WATAUGA LAKE CEMETERIES
15 Dec 1998
 
Dear Ms. Katzman:
 
Thank you for your interest in the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). In the Watauga Reservoir area the policies, procedures, and methods followed in carrying out the cemetery-relocation program were in general the same as those employed for similar work in previously completed TVA reservoirs. Removals and reinterments were governed by the rules and regulations of the Tennessee Dept. of Health and the North Carolina State Board of Health.
 
Reconnaissance surveys made in order to locate cemeteries in the Watauga Reservoir area had been completed when the grave-removal program was begun in the spring of 1942. As detail surveys of the affected cemeteries were being made, relatives of the interred persons were being interviewed to ascertain their wishes in regard to disposition of the graves. Work on the Watauga project was discontinued in compliance with an order issued by the War Production Board November 21, 1942 but at that time all cemeteries known to be affected had been mapped and approximately one-half of the relatives of the deceased had been contacted.
 
Grave-relocation activities were not resumed until the spring of 1947, and it was considered advisable, at that time, to re-contact practically all the persons with whom arrangements had been made in 1942 for the removal of graves of relatives. Actual removal operations were started in May 1947, but bad weather and the inability of some of the surviving kin to decide on reinterment sites made it necessary to stop work during the winter of 1947-48. Activities were again resumed in the summer of 1948, and all but 20 of the affected graves were relocated at that time. A special crew removed these holdover graves in the fall of the same year.
 
Of the 103 cemeteries, 3452 graves were investigated, and 1281 graves were removed. Investigation of all cemeteries in the reservoir area revealed that 40 would be flooded or affected by wave action, 7 would be isolated, 1 would be affected by construction, 24 would be served by relocated roads, and 31 would not be flooded and would continue to have access after filling of the reservoir. A total of 874 monuments including both head-and foot-stones were removed, cleaned and reset.
 
Today TVA has a cemetery relocation database that lists the graves affected, the name of the original cemetery, and the name of the new cemetery. I have attached the cemetery relocation database information for Watauga.
 
This is the only information available in-house. All other information, such as the original cemetery maps and the relocation forms with the next of kin's signature, have been transferred to the National Archives--Southeast Region, 1557 St. Joseph Avenue, East Point, Georgia 30344, (404) 763-7650.
 
I trust this information will prove useful to your research.
 
Sincerely,

Patricia Bernard Ezzell
Historian