Culture of Marion County, Tennessee

Bean-Roulston Graveyard

A pioneer family burying ground in Sweeden's Cove holding veterans of every American war from the Revolution to Korea

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Last updated: May 6, 2026

The Primitive Baptist Church of Sweeten's Cove, the 1853 congregation building about three quarters of a mile south of Bean-Roulston Graveyard
The Primitive Baptist Church of Sweeten's Cove, completed in 1853 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. The Bean-Roulston Graveyard sits about three quarters of a mile north of the church on the same Sweetens Cove Road corridor, and the two institutions share an unbroken record of the western cove's founding families through the church's minute books from 1821 to 1904.

Setting

Bean-Roulston Graveyard sits on a slight hill in Sweeden's Cove, the long valley that bites west into the Cumberland Plateau from the Sequatchie River and the Tennessee River bend below South Pittsburg. The cemetery is reached from U.S. 72 by driving about seven miles west on Sweetens Cove Road and then north onto Beene Cemetery Road for a further fifth of a mile to a slight rise behind a sandstone wall. The Tennessee Historical Commission marker that names the cemetery, marker number 2B 20, stands at the U.S. 72 junction rather than at the cemetery itself, and so points visitors toward a burying ground that is not visible from the highway.

The site is the historic burying ground of the Bean and Raulston families, the founding pioneer households of the western end of the cove, and of the Patton, Payne, and Wynne families they intermarried with. The Sweeten's Cove Primitive Baptist Church, organized in 1821 and with its present 1853 building still standing, is about three quarters of a mile to the south and shares a long history with the cemetery; minute books for the church from 1821 to 1904 are preserved among the J. Leonard Raulston papers at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

Founding by Captain Robert Bean, 1824

The cemetery was opened on November 17, 1824 with the burial of Captain Robert Bean, the Revolutionary War officer for whom it is named. Bean was born in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, on May 3, 1764. He served in the Watauga Riflemen on the trans-Appalachian frontier during the Indian wars of the 1770s and at the Battle of King's Mountain on October 7, 1780, where he held a captain's commission in the Revolutionary American forces. Bean came down to Tennessee with the early Sequatchie Valley wave around 1808 or 1809, took up substantial holdings in the western end of the cove, and died on his own land in November 1824. He was buried where he fell, and the family burying ground at his grave became the Bean-Roulston cemetery. Two of his great-grandsons placed a brass marker at the grave in 1917 with the inscription "Captain Robert Bean, Born in Virginia, A Captain in the Indian Wars, A Companion of Daniel Boone, A Tennessee Volunteer, A Hero of King's Mountain, An Intrepid Pioneer Patriot, 1750 to 1824," and a second marker was placed by the Southern Bean Association in 1998 with the corrected birth year of 1764. Modern genealogical work, the Bean-Roulston Cemetery Association, and the cemetery's roadside marker all use the 1764 date; the 1750 date on the older marker reflects an early confusion with another Captain Robert Bean of the same generation.

Four of Captain Bean's sons, Lemuel, Obediah, William, and Robert, changed the family spelling from Bean to Beene, the form that runs through the cemetery's roster from the 1830s on. The Beene family is the second-largest single surname presence in the cemetery and the namesake of the Beene-Pearson Public Library in South Pittsburg. The Bean and Beene names together account for sixty-eight memorials in the cemetery's recorded roster; combined with the Raulston and Roulston spellings of the allied family, they account for about a third of all burials.

Colonel James Roulston: a marker, not a grave

The cemetery's name pairs Captain Bean with Colonel James Roulston, the War of 1812 officer and early Tennessee public man whose family married into the Beans by the 1820s. Roulston was born in Virginia on June 16, 1778, came west in the early 1800s, opened the inn known as Roulston's Stand near Chestnut Mound in Jackson County, served as a delegate to Knoxville in 1801 to organize Jackson County itself, and moved to the Sequatchie Valley in 1808. There, with the Bean family, he and his partners entered claims on more than fifty-seven thousand acres. He took a colonel's commission in the Tennessee Militia for the War of 1812, commanded the 18th Tennessee Infantry at the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815, and as Indian commissioner helped Andrew Jackson conclude the Cherokee treaty work of 1817 to 1819. He died on August 7, 1844, at the age of sixty-six in Doran's Cove, Jackson County, Alabama.

Colonel Roulston is not buried at Bean-Roulston. He is buried at Doran's Cove Cemetery in Alabama, near Russell Cave and Bridgeport. The Bean-Roulston cemetery carries his name because of the family's intermarriage with the Beans, and the marker the South Pittsburg Historic Preservation Society inventories at the cemetery for "Colonel James Roulston" is a commemorative cenotaph, not a grave. His wife, Jane Simmons Roulston, born in Charleston, South Carolina, on March 27, 1783, did die in Marion County on May 12, 1870, and is buried here; her stone identifies her as the wife of Colonel James Roulston of Doran's Cove. The same naming convention runs through several other cove marriages: the Bean and Beene families intermarried with the Raulston, Patton, Payne, Wynne, Womack, and Wilson lines, so a cemetery roster that looks small at first glance covers most of the founding generation of the western cove.

The twenty unidentified Confederates of the Battle of Sweeden's Cove, June 4, 1862

On June 4, 1862, a Union force under Brigadier General James S. Negley struck a Confederate cavalry brigade under Colonel John Adams in the western end of the cove. The action was the first engagement of the war for the 79th Pennsylvania Infantry, and the Union side counted only two killed and seven wounded, most of those in the supporting 5th Kentucky Cavalry. About twenty Confederate cavalrymen were killed. Their bodies were buried in a single grave at the western end of the Bean-Roulston cemetery, and the regiment they had ridden with was never recorded. The cemetery's stone for the burial reads "Confederates, Twenty Unknown, JUNE 4, 1862, CSA CAVALRYMEN KILLED IN BATTLE SWEDEN COVE, TENN."

The Bean-Roulston Cemetery Association has tried more than once across the decades to identify the men buried in the unknown grave. The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion preserve the action's after-action reports and the regimental composition of Adams's brigade, but the burial detail's roll did not survive. The twenty Confederates of June 4, 1862 are still unidentified, and the grave at Bean-Roulston is the only physical record of them. The cemetery's larger roster also includes a substantial number of unmarked field-stone graves, and the South Pittsburg Historic Preservation Society's 2005 inventory closes with the count of "x 81 rough field stone markers" of unknown identity, a category that overlaps the Find a Grave roster's twenty-five "unknown" entries but is much larger than that count alone suggests.

Sheriff Wash Coppinger and the 1927 Christmas Night Shootout

Marion County Sheriff George Washington "Wash" Coppinger, born October 1, 1859, died in the Christmas Night Shootout at the corner of Cedar Avenue and Third Street in downtown South Pittsburg on December 25, 1927, the culmination of a year-long labor dispute at the H. Wetter Manufacturing Company stove works. Six law-enforcement officers from the South Pittsburg Police Department and the Marion County Sheriff's Department were killed or fatally wounded in the street that night. Coppinger and his wife, Sarah E. Coppinger (April 25, 1865 to November 24, 1906), are buried near the entrance of the Bean-Roulston cemetery, the only shootout victim interred here. The five other officers killed are buried at Patton Cemetery, Patton Annex, Beene Cemetery, and the State Line Cemetery on the Alabama line, in a pattern that scattered the dead across most of the South Pittsburg-area burying grounds.

The 1928 South Pittsburg Hustler account of Coppinger's funeral, transcribed by his descendants, names the family church service at the Southern Methodist Church in Jasper, the Reverend A. F. Phenix of Chattanooga officiating, and the long procession back over the ridge to "Sweeten's Cove Cemetery, twelve miles from Jasper, where the burial took place." The pallbearers were Sam Anderson, Dr. Joe Raulston, Sam Polk Raulston, Eddie Graham, Pat Brewer, and Marvin Wilkerson, and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows took charge of the graveside service. The Coppinger, Beene, Raulston, and Payne families are densely interconnected in this section of the cemetery; nine of Coppinger's children and their spouses appear in the roster as well.

Veterans of every American war from the Revolution to Korea

The Tennessee Historical Commission marker on U.S. 72 calls Bean-Roulston the burying ground of soldiers who took part in every American war beginning with the Revolution. The cemetery's roster supports the claim. Captain Robert Bean (Revolution and Indian wars) is the founder. Samuel Raulston (1775 to 1831) carries an upright stone reading "Ensign 39th Regiment U.S. Navy, Served in War of 1812." John Patton (1785 to 1854) is marked "Lieutenant, 28 Tennessee Militia, War of 1812." Robert Paine (September 20, 1794 to April 12, 1859) carries an "Ensign, 15th Regiment Tennessee Militia, War of 1812" marker. Lewis Pain (September 20, 1819 to March 14, 1892) is marked "Private, Snodgrass Regiment, Indian Wars." Robert Patton (July 25, 1816 to February 21, 1886) is marked "2nd Lieutenant, 12th Regiment Tennessee Infantry, Mexican War."

For the Civil War, Lemuel J. Beene (1835 to 1925) served in Company A, 34th Tennessee Infantry, Confederate States Army; Matthew Wynn Beene (born and died on April 21, eighty-five years apart, 1835 to 1920) was a sergeant of Company G, 3rd Confederate Cavalry; and William R. Johnson (1830 to 1897) carries a marker as a corporal of Troop F, 2nd Virginia Cavalry, Confederate States Army. Three Beene men of fighting age died in the war years and are buried here: Russell O. Beene (1838 to March 6, 1862), George W. Beene (1840 to 1863), and Newton J. Payne (1843 to September 22, 1863). On the Union side, Samuel H. Roulston (1838 to 1908) is marked "Sergeant, Company F, 5th Regiment Tennessee Cavalry," a Union regiment, and Osborne Alexander McCoy (1845 to 1918) carries a stone marking him as a soldier of Company C, 3rd Tennessee Cavalry, also a Union regiment. Their burial in the same family ground as the Confederate veterans, and only a few rows from the twenty unidentified Confederates of 1862, captures the way the war split families across Marion County rather than dividing the county as a whole.

For World War I, the cemetery holds William Eslie Beene (Company I, 52nd Infantry), John Elmer Payne, Livvie Mayberry (Company A, 18th Infantry), and Walter Earl Patterson (168th Antiaircraft Artillery, who served in both world wars). For World War II, George Patton Beene (United States Navy), Leonard H. Havner (Company A, 390th Infantry), Milburn "GID" Holder, James A. Coppinger, John Nixon (United States Naval Reserve), Newt Ed Rector, and Henry H. Raulston Jr. all served and are buried here. For Korea, First Lieutenant Charles Perry Jackson of the United States Air Force was killed in action and is commemorated here by a cenotaph; his body is interred at Marietta National Cemetery in Georgia. Master Chief Petty Officer James Lonnie Payne served in both World War II and Korea and is buried here. The unbroken chain of veteran burials from 1824 to the present is one reason the cemetery carries a Tennessee Historical Commission marker, placed at the highway turn rather than at the cemetery itself because the burying ground sits seven miles in from U.S. 72 along the cove road.

Dominant families

The cemetery's roster of five hundred five memorials is concentrated in a small number of founding-era families. Raulston and Roulston together account for ninety-one memorials, the largest single family presence; Bean and Beene together account for sixty-eight, the second largest. Together the two families hold about thirty-one percent of the burials in the cemetery. The Payne family follows with thirty-nine memorials, then the Case, Collins, Rector, Reynolds, and Woodfin families, each with eleven to seventeen memorials. The Hampton, Patton, McCoy, Ellis, Gibson, and Havner families each carry between seven and nine memorials. The Coppinger, Holder, Lasater, Marlow, Motes, and Smith families each carry five to six.

Maiden-name patterns trace the cove's intermarriage network through the burials. Bean-Womack (Captain Bean's marriage to Martha Womack in 1781), Beene-Patton (Lemuel J. Beene to Elizabeth Jane Patton), Patton-Raulston, Coppinger-Raulston (Sheriff Wash's daughter married Turner E. Coppinger, with a parallel Fannie Belle Raulston Coppinger line), Bean-Wilson (Samuel and Ann Wilson, late 1790s), and Bean-Wynne (Matthew Wynn Beene; Bryce A. Wynne and John Matt Wynne in the inventory) all appear repeatedly in the stones. The Bean and Roulston families together produced one of Marion County's most thoroughly intermarried pioneer networks, and the cemetery is the central physical record of it.

Inventory and present care

The cemetery's modern inventory was compiled by Dennis Lambert, Erin Lambert, and Andrew Hayes in November 2005, and the South Pittsburg Historic Preservation Society publishes the resulting transcription on both its legacy and active sites. The Bean-Roulston Cemetery Association, incorporated in 1962 with original trustees D. W. Raulston, L. P. Beene, J. C. Marlow, J. Leonard Raulston, and S. P. Raulston, maintains the cemetery and updates a separate full inventory that was current to January 2022. The Association received its IRS nonprofit ruling in 1992 and is the present operating entity, with a mailing address at 7783 Sweetens Cove Road in South Pittsburg. New markers were placed at the cemetery for Captain Robert Bean and the commemorative Colonel James Roulston in 2025, replacing or upgrading earlier markers documented in place by 2011.

Related

Sweeden's Cove →
The Battle of Sweeden's Cove, June 4, 1862 →
The 1927 Christmas Night Shootout →
Civil War in Marion County →
First Settlers →
Cemeteries of Marion County →

Sources