On September 22, 1863, during a campaign to control the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, Union forces attacked Blountville from the south bank of the Watauga River while Confederates occupied the town. Union Colonel John W. Foster led his cavalry brigade across the river at 9 A.M., drove off pickets from Confederate Col. James E. Carter’s 1st Tennessee Cavalry, and occupied Cemetery Hill. Foster then shelled Carter’s positions in Blountville and ordered a charge about sundown that pushed Carter’s regiment from the town. Foster reported six killed and fourteen wounded, and the next day he occupied Carter’s Depot as the Confederates withdrew. The cemetery at this site was created before 1824 on land that later belonged to the adjacent Blountville Presbyterian Church, and although churches typically had their own burying grounds, the local Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist churches all shared this cemetery.