This labor of love began as one of the first major projects of the newly-formed Unicoi County Historical Society in the early 1970s. By 1973, about 35 cemeteries, all in the northern part of the county, had been copied. Fifteen years went by, and then, in the winter of 1987–1988, a new committee was formed and the project was begun again. The committee found that in 1960, 15 cemeteries, mostly in the southern part of the county, had been copied, adding up to a total of 50 cemeteries that had been recorded. Final copying began in April 1988 and was completed a little over a year later. The total of 166 copied included an update of the 50 cemeteries done earlier.