In May of 1835 the Salem Baptist Church was organized, while the land was still under the control of the Cherokee tribe. The building was a log structure and was built on land owned by George Gardenshire and near to his home. The church and the Gardenshire residence were built near a fine spring of clear, sparkling water flowing from a hill, which was near the Tennessee River, in present-day Hamilton County, TN.
As one would expect some of the people, who lived nearby died and the church started a cemetery near the church. So all the people in the local area were buried in the Gardenshire Cemetery, as there was no other place close by to bury a loved one. In 1853 the church building burned and the members voted to re-locate to the area where the main road crossed Grasshopper Creek, on land that Joseph Roark donated. Maybe more members lived closer to the Grasshopper Creek site than near the original site.
When the church moved, the cemetery was left alone. Not many people would come near it in their normal travel, so after the original settlers died and were buried in the cemetery, there were no new burials. Many of their children were buried in newer cemeteries, close to their homes. As the Gardenshire property sold and re-sold the old graveyard was left unattended and overgrown. The last owner of the property, before the land was purchased by the TVA for the Chickamauga Reservoir, was a man by the name of Dyke Eldridge.
Dyke Eldridge must have been an individual who did not honor the dead. George Friddell said that Dyke Eldridge took up all of the grave markers and hauled them off, except one, his own grandfather's. His grandfather's marker, which stood three or more feet tall, he used as a cornerstone for a barn that he built near the site.
Now everyone in the area was very upset with Dyke for destroying the cemetery. The fact that he used a grave marker as a cornerstone just made matters worse. They told him that God would punish him for his deed. Well, in a couple of years a tornado came through the area and wiped out his barn. So he re-built the barn again, and used the same cornerstone. It was not long until another act of God destroyed the barn again. Again he re-built, still using the marker as a cornerstone. In 1937-39 TVA purchased the land for the Chickamauga Reservoir and allowed the land owners to remove any and all structures from their property before the TVA took possession. Dyke dismantled the barn and reassembled it at another location. It was only a few years before this barn was destroyed by fire.
Some burials in this lost graveyard, as reported by Laura Roark Shropshire in her book, Pioneer Days, Stories of the Conner-Roark Ancestry are: