The Big Springs Cemetery, located near Pinson Mounds, Madison Co., Tenn., probably began as a private or family burial grounds before the Civil War, but it was not associated closely with the Methodist Church until after 1877. On the Madison County map of that year, the cemetery is identified and the Methodist Episcopal Church was then about a mile to the south, near or on the Paulin O. Anderson farm in what is now Chester County. The cemetery had a section where slaves and later freed Negroes were buried. It is now grown up in trees but has some stones yet. Other known burial grounds nearby were on the Chappell-Anderson Place on the bluff near the Forked Deer River, on the Allen Place at or near Mason Wells, and on the Wooley Place near the Billie Watlington home. The latter one has stones indicating burials as early as 1846 and as recent as 1885. Another burial ground, still used, is at New Friendship Baptist Church, several miles distant to the southeast. At Bear Creek, to the west, was another cemetery associated with the Methodist Church there. The present Pinson Cemetery is not an old cemetery. Another was at Mt. Pisgah on the Jackson-Purdy Stage Road to the south of Pinson about three miles. The cemetery on the Allen Place was known as the ``Old Pioneer Cemetery.'' This is where Patrick Sauls was buried. The above mentioned family burial grounds were in common use into the 1880's. Winnifred Chappell Anderson was buried in the Chappell-Anderson family cemetery in 1887, beside her husband who had died in an accident in flood waters of December 1876.
The Watlington relatives have used many of these cemeteries in the one hundred and forty-five years they have been in West Tennessee, but it is in the Big Springs Cemetery, located between Five Points and the Mt. Pinson Indian Mounds where the greatest concentration of relatives have been buried.
Michael C. Watlington and wife, his daughter Ora, and at least one Winningham child were buried at Holly Springs Methodist Cemetery several miles east of Big Springs, where the Parchmans, Michael C. Watlington and the Joe C. Winninghams then lived. The Parchmans may have used that cemetery also at an earlier date but there are no known stones. Later the Winninghams buried at Henderson Cemetery. Fredonia Parchman Watlington is believed to be buried here beside her husband. Big Springs became the common burial ground for the neighborhood when the Methodist Church was located adjacent to that site, better roads and more prosperous conditions made travel easier. Mack Rob brought two children from west of Pinson to Big Springs for burial in 1901, and returned the body of his wife Eula Daniel W. from west of Bear Creek Church to Big Springs in July 1903. Other related families who have buried there include Sauls, Daniels, Parchmans, Oziers, Crooms, Kaltreiders, Houstons, Andersons, and Weirs.
-- January, 1975