Once more Mrs. B'rer and Old B'rer scampered off into the hinterlands locating graves of distant kin. In this case a 4th Great Uncle (on the branch what can't spell right - these are 'eth' instead of the correct 'ith' Griffiths.
Let's face it. Spelling was highly variable in the 18th and 19th centuries. In this case we have brothers (two of several) where one used 'eth' and the other 'ith' spellers. No one can say why this was.
In this case the 4th Great Uncle, his wife, and a spinster daughter (She passed away at age 65 having never married. That is the very definition of 'Spinster'!). But also an infant that could not immediately be placed. The infant's birth and death made it highly unlikely that he was the son of B'rer's uncle. A little digging revealed that he was a grandson of B'rer's great uncle. Pity. The little fella lived but a scant 18 days.
Spinster Cousin (flat stone), 4th Great Uncle, 4th Great Aunt (upright markers), and infant cousin (flat marker)
Infant's stone held up for photo (normally laying flat)
But finding the child's stone and reading it firsthand showed that his Find A Grave entry in error. His name was totally wrong and he was not linked to his parents. Both things have now been corrected.
That is the least we can do to keep his short life from being totally forgotten.
Before we could locate the graves we sought, we noticed something we did not anticipate at all: A Revolutionary War Veteran!
And he explained the oddity of a Pentecost Methodist Church!
The church is indeed a Methodist Church. But is it named for the man who founded it - one William Pentecost. Our Revolutionary War veteran was also a Methodist preacher!
William Pentecost's marker
The number of Patriots we are finding in these far-flung places is astounding. Not at all what we expected given how remote the area was at the time.
"They call the wind 'Thyatira'". At least that was what kept bouncing around old B'rer's brain every time he saw the name.
B'rer and the Missus were out in the hinterlands once again and spotted a sign:
Now we've all used the term 'frontier', but seldom does it sink in just what that means and where it was at various points in history. In basic, generalistic terms it refers to the outer limit of "civilized" settlements. The Frontier differs from the boundaries of a State or Territory in that it is generally not under the jurisdiction of a formal government. That is, it is more the "wilds". As (cough) Civilization moves in and takes hold, and formal government is enacted, what the Frontier (it was originally the Front Tier, but that is a much longer and convoluted matter!) is pushed out. So it was that what was deemed "The Frontier" in the United States varied over the decades and centuries. In Colonial times places like Ohio and Western Pennsylvania, most of Georgia, and other 'eastern' lands were The Frontier. As these lands were populated, the States grew and the Frontier was pushed westward.
In 1796 the land where this church sits were barely out of the official Frontier stage. In fact, this area had only been an official part of the State of Georgia a mere 10 years. And we are talking about a church that was established only 13 years after the end of the American Revolution. You are not getting much older unless you start looking at any Native Tribes who previously occupied the area. Raids and attacks were not exactly over at this point! Let's just say that the locals were not always welcoming of the newcomers.
So seeing anything away from the original Parishes (Didn't know that Georgia started with Parishes and changed to Counties later? Well you learned a thing!) dating from that period makes the old ears perk up! There weren't a lot of them to begin with and few survive to this day. They are all worthy of exploration.
Mrs. B'rer got a good laugh when B'rer tried pronouncing the name. It was not one he had heard of before let alone tried speaking aloud. Apparently it is Thy-a-teerah.
Go figure.
Sadly, everything from the early days was either a field stone or was a wooden marker long disintegrated. More permanent markers tended to date from the late 1800s on.
Mrs. B'rer asked across the cemetery what the USS Akron was. My ears perked up.
This is footage of the airship the year before it crashed at sea and was lost taking 73 of the 76 member crew with it.
Almost everyone knows of the Hindenberg Disaster, largely because of the dramatic film of the event. Both ships were Zeppelins/Dirigibles (A Zeppelin or Dirigible differs from a Blimp by having a rigid frame. You can see the frame of the Hindenburg in the crash film and that of the Akron in photos in the Wiki link above).
Turns out that one of the crew from the airship has a marker in the cemetery. This is almost certainly a cenotaph as I am relatively certain that few of the victim's remains were recovered.
Why all this interest? The Akron was a greater disaster in terms of loss of life than the Hindenburg. Indeed, it had greater than DOUBLE the fatalities (73) of the Hindenburg (35). It remains (and unless some twist of fate resurrects the use of rigid frame airships will forever be) the greatest airship disaster in history.
Think of the Akron as the airship equivalent to the Sultana. Never heard of the Sultana? Bet you have heard of the Titanic, though. Numbers vary, but in most respects the Sultana surpasses the Titanic as a worse (the worse?) maritime disaster. It was a riverboat with a capacity of 461 passengers and crew. It had 2,137 people on board when its boiler exploded and it sank. Depending on whose numbers you believe, it had more fatalities than the Titanic. To have been carrying the same level of excess passengers as the Sultana the Titanic would have had to had a over 16,100 people on board instead of the 2,208 it actually had!
Look at all the learning you are getting today!
If you are curious, William's rating was Pattern Maker - 1st Class. The acronyms for Naval Ratings (all military ratings and ranks for that matter) could almost make for a book themselves. They are incredibly varied. If you pause to consider this one, it begins to make sense. An airship has a cloth or material covering made of many different sections. The same holds true for much of the interior as well. Whenever something had to be repaired, a pattern was necessary. And someone had to draw them up. Hence a Pattern Maker rating. Not something you would likely see today.
No doubt that William was excited to be so far from his country roots. To be in the service, seeing the country and world. Pity he did not live long enough to return home with all the tales of his adventure.
Virus be damned! Mrs. B'rer bailed out of the warren and scampered into the hinterland recently. The weather was simply too gorgeous to all it to be wasted. We declared it a 'medically necessary' excursion - we all need sunlight to make Vitamin D!
Many times in our excursions back and forth to old B'rer's ancestral grounds we had noticed a sign for a 'Smith Cemetery Rd". This time we determined to check it out and see what was to be seen.
Our hopes rose when we transitioned from asphalt to a gravel road. All the best stuff has directions that include "turn off the paved road". Mrs. B'rer immediately started calling out "Crack House" in a throwback reference to that extremely risky excursion to one of her ancestor's resting place.
I had to point out to her that we were nowhere near Crack House territory. That was clear based on the quality of the homes and the presence of actual new construction.
We then turned a corner and I had to reconsider my argument. Oy! Move over Fred Sandford. There is some serious junk going on here!
We located the cemetery and were pleased to see a well maintained, attractive family cemetery. Even more interesting is that it is clearly active. The latest burial being January 2020. That is most unusual in such situations.
Many stones were clearly later placements for older graves, and many had no dates for the lifespans of those they note.
But one was of particular interest.
The location, name (this surname is the only one in the cemetery), the minimal but provoking inscription, the age, and the fact that the exact style marker is used for others who passed in the early 1900s all conspire to fuel old B'rer's imagination.
Could this be the grave of a former slave who, after emancipation, remained with the family of - if not her actual - former master? These are cases you hear of, or read about, but never actually encounter.
Details are noted so that I can do the research and learn the history.
(Intermission: Let's all go to the lobby and get ourselves a snack)
A few days and a LOT of research later, I have my answer. Sort of.
There is absolutely noting 100% solid on her on-line. What there is indicates that she was probably born in the early 1800s and died around 1900, was married and had children and grandchildren. And being white was not a slave (though even that is not a guarantee - white slaves were exceedingly rare but did exist).
I shall probably never know how a Twitty came to be in a Smith family cemetery.
Looks like I shall have to learn to live with being disappointed.
