08/21/2025
If you’ve ever driven down Maple Grove Road in Lafayette, you’ve passed by more history than you might imagine. Let me tell you a story about two gravesites that connect our little corner of Tennessee to both the birth of our nation and the courage of early settlers who carved out life here.
The first lies in the Wright Cemetery, where a crypt marker tells us of Robert Wright. Born in Virginia in 1759, Robert lived through the fire of the American Revolution. The stone says he fought “under General Washington and Greene nearly the whole of the war.” Just think about that for a moment—right here in Macon County rests a man who once stood shoulder to shoulder with George Washington himself, a true hero of independence. He died in 1831, remembered not only as a soldier but as an “honest, high-minded honorable man.” When I walk past that stone, I can almost hear the echo of muskets and the call to liberty that shaped our nation.
Now, just a short distance down the same road, in the Vesper Crowder Cemetery, rests another story. A crypt slab marks the resting place of Duncan and Isabel Ferguson, both born in Argyle Shire, Scotland, in 1762. They crossed the ocean, made a life here, raised children, and laid down their legacy. Duncan’s death in 1808 is the earliest date etched on any stone in Macon County, proof that people were living and dying on this land just a dozen years after Tennessee became a state in 1796.
Two graves, just a fraction of a mile apart—one ties us to the Revolution that gave us a country, the other to the immigrants who built lives on new soil. Together, they remind us that Macon County isn’t just a place on a map. It’s a thread in the fabric of America’s story.
Information and photographs received from Randy East, Macon County Historian
