Willstown Mission Cemetery

In 1823 Cherokee leaders John Ross, Andrew Ross, and George Lowery persuaded the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to open a mission/school for the Cherokee in Willstown. Situated on the main road from Ross’s Landing to Willstown, the property was adjacent to a council ground frequently used by the Cherokee during the 1820s and 1830s. Several structures were constructed that year, including a 2-story log house for the missionaries, separate classrooms for the girls and boys, cabins for the students who boarded, and numerous outbuildings. Teachers included Reverend and Mrs. Ard Hoyt, Reverend and Mrs. William Chamberlain, and Reverend Daniel Butrick. In February of 1828, Reverend Ard Hoyt died after a brief illness and was buried on the property in a marked grave. Nothing remains of the mission/school, which closed before the removal in 1838. The cemetery contains 50 or more graves, but only identified graves are those of Hoyt and of eight white settlers buried between 1841 and 1898. Some of the unidentified graves could be those of the 41 Cherokee who, according to military records, died in camp at Fort Payne before the Benge Detachment’s departure.

The Willstown Mission Cemetery Site has been certified by the National Park Service as an official component of the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail. The congressionally designated trail commemorates the tragic history of the removal of the Cherokee people from their ancestral homelands to territory in the West.