John Wallace next to the McGhee family memorial stone, Toco Cemetery, 2025.
The McGhee family memorial, Toco Cemetery, 2025.
John Wallace at the McClung Collection at the East Tennessee History Center, Knoxville, TN, 2025

In a partnership between the Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area, the Center for Historic Preservation, and Tennessee State Parks, I conducted research on the history of the McGhee-Callaway-Carson property with a particular focus on Toco Cemetery, which contains burials for people enslaved by the McGhee family, tenant farms who worked the property following the Civil War, and the descendants of both groups. I authored a history of the site, as well as individual biographies of those buried in the cemetery. I developed a preservation plan for the cemetery, an outline for an interpretive plan for the cemetery and homesite, as well as text content for two interpretive signs for the site and a commemorative sign for the cemetery.

View Report