Our History

Bean- Roulston Cemetery Origins

The Bean-Roulston Cemetery originated as a Bean family cemetery with the burial of Captain Robert Bean on November 17, 1824, using family property located in Sweetens Cove, Tennessee. Several of Captain Bean’s descendants married descendants of Colonel James Raulston in the early 1800s. Burials from the union of these pioneer families were some of the early entries into the cemetery. Descendants of Captain Bean also married into other pioneer families that occupied the western end of Sweetens Cove at that time. Those early additions included the Patton, Payne, and Wynne families. Burials from these families were also early entries into the cemetery. As time progressed many other families married descendants of these pioneers establishing an ongoing kinship that still utilizes this family cemetery today.  

Bean- Roulston Cemetery Association

Robert Bean, the father of Obadiah, moved to Sweetens Cove in Marion County, TN in 1809 where he had acquired a substantial landholding. Robert set aside a small portion of the land to serve as a family cemetery. Robert died in 1824 and was buried in the cemetery, as were his descendants. The cemetery also began to serve as a community burying ground with little or no supervision or maintenance. In the mid-1930s, Philip Beene, Leonard Raulston, and a small group of trustees began a major cleanup effort and, in 1941 and 1944, bought land in and around the original cemetery from O.N and Maud Ellis.

The trustees were D. W. Raulston, L. P. Beene, J. C. Marlow, J. Leonard Raulston, and S. P. Raulston. The cemetery continued to serve as a free burying ground until 1962. At the time, the Bean-Raulston Cemetery Association came into being as a corporate entity. Association lawyer and parliamentarian S. P. Raulston drafted the by-laws. These by-laws were substantially modified in 1992 and 1995.