Gabriel Butler “Ole Gabe,” born in the Carolinas in 1779, appeared in Kentucky records in the 1800s and 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; Butler and others petitioned in 1809 to remain, but they were evicted around 1811, and he moved north into Tennessee with his family. Treaties signed in 1817 allowed Lauderdale County to be created in February 1818, and after the Federal Land Office opened sales in March 1818, Butler traveled to Huntsville on November 14, 1818, to buy land along Bluewater Creek, eventually owning several acres there. His land was fertile and rich in water, timber, and game, and he first built a 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 Country, which was named for him. Butler died in November 1856 at age 77 and was buried within the rock walls with some of his family. 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.