HISTORY

The History of Eppes.

In the 1830s, the U.S. government awarded land grants to individuals who had the means to develop land into self-sustaining settlements. To take advantage of the land grants, the Finch, Cates, Eppes, Ford, Tucker, and Simpson families moved together from North Carolina to South Carolina, Mississippi, and eventually in 1836 to the Greenwood and Caddo Parish area. When Ballard Finch Eppes’ infant daughter, Judith Elizabeth Eppes, died in 1837, he set aside three acres of land for a private cemetery adjacent to what is now Greenwood Road. Ballard, who was buried in a large vault at Eppes in 1855, was a cousin by marriage to Thomas Jefferson’s wife.

In 1927, interested family members who lived in the area, including Edna Jones Cates Tucker, S.O. Jones, and George Nelson, collected money from other family members to purchase two of the original three acres. They created access to the cemetery from the Greenwood Road and used a portion of their collections to erect a fence around the main portion of the cemetery.

In 1926, the non-profit Eppes Cemetery Corporation was formed. In the 1970s, after years of cemetery neglect, Boykin Witherspoon unselfishly took an interest in maintaining the cemetery. Deteriorating headstones were replaced with granite to preserve marked graves for generations to come. In the 1990s, George and Joe Ann Tucker began gathering family members and other volunteers for twice-a-year maintenance work, a tradition that continues today.

Many notable individuals are buried at Eppes, including Ezra J. Cates, the grandson of Declaration of Independence signer Benjamin Harrison, and many Civil War veterans including S.O. Jones, E. J. S. Cates, E. D. Tucker, and R.P. Cates, whose headstone inscription says he was killed at the Battle of Sharpstown.