Jackson Cemetery, Inc. Turns 75

A local landmark will mark its seventy-fifth year on Sunday.

The Jackson Cemetery, Inc. was chartered by the Kentucky Secretary of State’s Office on January 31, 1951, by a group of Jackson residents.

The cemetery was organized on August 18, 1950, during a meeting at the Jefferson Hotel.  Several attendees expressed concerns that the Marcum Heights Cemetery, the only public cemetery in the county, was rapidly filling up and was not incorporated for perpetual care.  The group started negotiations with a local family to acquire a cemetery site.

In August 1950, the cemetery committee purchased twelve acres of the William D. Back farm, including the Joseph Little Cemetery, with the intention of establishing a “public burying ground.”

Under the leadership of Hoy H. Miller, Roscoe C. Bach, Mrs. Lute Miller, Effie Bach, John S. Hollan, Harlan Strong, and others, the Jackson Cemetery was incorporated and started operations.

The trustees proposed the removal of the “brush and rubbish” near the cemetery and announced that they wanted to enclose the “cemetery with a permanent fence and sod the entire area with bluegrass.”

In the Spring of 1951, surveyors mapped the cemetery.  Several new areas were divided into plots for sale, and a “circular driveway” was installed.

The new cemetery, a non-profit corporation, was touted as the first of its kind east of Winchester.

The Jackson Cemetery, Breathitt County’s largest, was officially dedicated before more than 250 witnesses who traveled the five miles to the cemetery on May 30, 1952.

Since its establishment, several local men have continued the cemetery's work as superintendent, including Hoy H. Miller, John S. Hollan, J. Phil Smith, Greg Lemons, Rick Turner, and others.

Since its founding, the Jackson Cemetery has expanded several times, adding new burial plots.  It is estimated that more than 3,000 graves are located in the cemetery, including several whose “old sandstone markers” were removed in the 1950s to make the cemetery “more attractive.”