At 2:40 on Saturday, February 22, 2020, The last Challenge Coin (#100) for the 2020 African American History Month Heritage Geocache Challenge was given out. Congratulations to all the Geocachers. The geocaches will remain in place for a few months for public education. Thank you for participating.
This Geocache is part of an annual Geocache Challenge put on by the Heritage Program at Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area as part of our outreach to the public, to get people to explore their forest and their history, and to share the unique heritage of the families from Between the Rivers.
This Geocache is part of the “2020 Land Between the Lakes Heritage Geocache Challenge: African American History of Lyon County”. There are 7 geocaches placed in Lyon County in Land Between the Lakes related to the African American Heritage of the area. If you locate each geocache, and collect a numbered aluminum tree tag from each cache, you can turn them in at the Golden Pond Visitor Center for one of 100 Challenge Coins created for this event.
The Geocache is a 6” x 6” clear watertight plastic box marked “Heritage Geocache” on the top. The geocache is placed in the woods at the location of the Young's Grove School.
The Young’s Grove Community Geocache
Young’s Grove originated as a community of African American families headed by Joseph Young (the son of John Young Sr.) after he acquired the property from the Henry Fulks estate in 1882.
By the early 1900s, Young’s Grove was operating both a church and a school for the local African American population. In 1921, the Trustees of Young’s Grove Free Will Baptist Church traded an acre of land with the Allison family and moved their church building closer to the community, located in a field adjacent to the school (see if you can locate the nearby church and school marker-posts).
In 1940 and 1941, all of the land in the Young’s Grove community was acquired by the Tennessee Valley Authority in preparation for the inundation of Kentucky Lake.
Newby Cemetery, Barnett Cemetery, and the Youngs Grove Community
While the Joseph Young property and Young’s Grove community surrounded Newby Cemetery, Newby Cemetery was not the cemetery used by the Young’s Grove community. Members of the Young’s Grove Community, including the families of William, David, and Scott Young, and their parents, Joseph and Rebecca Young, were all buried in Barnett Cemetery, located 1 mile northwest of here.
The nearby Newby Cemetery predated the Young’s Grove community and served many of the local white families, including the Newby, Fulks, Higgins, and Ingram families.
Joseph Young acquired the property from the estate of Henry Fulks in 1882. Henry was the son of John Fulks and Nancy Newby, and the husband of Mary Pollyanna Newby. The land on which the Young’s Grove community was built appears to have been Newby family land prior to 1882.