Gabriel Butler, known as “Ole Gabe” or “Old Gabe,” was born in the Carolinas in 1779, about the time of the Revolutionary War, and appears in Kentucky records in the 1800s. He married his first wife, Sarah Whitesides, in Warren County, Kentucky, on December 26, 1803. Among the earliest white settlers of Lauderdale County, he arrived during the early 1800s and leased land from Cherokee Chief Doublehead on the Chief’s Reserve. After Doublehead was killed in 1807, the government ordered settlers on the reserve to leave, and although Gabe and others petitioned in 1809 to remain, they were evicted around 1811 and moved north into Tennessee. Treaties signed in 1817 opened the way for the creation of Lauderdale County in February 1818, and when the Federal Land Office began selling land there in March 1818, Gabe traveled to Huntsville on November 14, 1818, to buy land along Bluewater Creek, eventually acquiring several acres in the area. His land was fertile and rich in water, timber, and game, and he first built his home on the hill across Bluewater, expecting the road between Huntsville and Florence to pass nearby, though it was instead built 1 1/2 miles south near the route of present-day U.S. Highway 72. After 1824, he built a second home southwest of here on this side of the creek. On May 16, 1840, Old Gabe donated two acres to begin the Primitive Baptist Church at Bluewater, from which the churches at Mitchell Town and Elgin Crossroads later developed. He also established the cemetery at this location, one of the earliest in Lauderdale County, which was named for him. Gabe died in November 1856 at age 77, and he and some family members were buried within the rock walls. He had three wives and 11 children, nine of whom married and raised families in the area, and many of his descendants are buried in this cemetery.