The Grove may have been pleasant once upon a time, many years ago. Today? Not so much. Between the electric sub-station on one side and the mound of illegally dumped mattresses on the other, and with the plethora of briars, brush, and ivy everywhere, pleasant is not really the term I would apply today.
Mattresses? Yup. No less than a half dozen. Probably more. I did not make the effort to gather a complete count. With 126 listed memorials in Find A Grave just getting a solid audit completed will prove to be enough of a task. Enough that we could not complete it (this being the end of a day of stomping through several cemeteries across a wide area). There are several that we either missed, could not find, of the update did not succeed.
That is not to say we did not make a valiant effort! Indeed, we found a couple of previously missed memorials (one being only a partial stone with hand lettering on it). One challenge was locating a child who passed just prior to her 3rd birthday. A note for little Ozella (now THERE is a name!) stated, "Back left corner of cemetery with headstone sunk into the earth hiding the death date." The problem being determining the cemetery orientation! What is the front and what is the back?
The headstones are oriented in the traditional East-West line for Christian beliefs and access today is from the Southern facing side. But looking carefully there are the remains of what looks like a roadbed running SSE to NNW along the Western facing side. I take that to be the original access thus making the West face the 'front' and slink off into the brush into the NE corner of the area. That is where I find the partial marker and pause to log it before resuming the search for Ozella's stone. I finally find it far removed from all the others. It is almost as though she was buried *outside* the cemetery. There certainly are not any obvious graves next to her. Even the partial stone I found is several feet removed from her grave. The area is far too overgrown to make a real assessment. Nor does there appear to be any records of the cemetery readily available. I suppose one could check property records and funeral home records to glean ideas about it. But as the meme today goes, "Ain't nobody got time for that!" Especially when there is no relationship to anyone in the cemetery.
Careful review shows one individual with two memorials! Yup. Submitted to be merged.
Further review raises two questionable memorials for deaths decades after the last clear burial in the cemetery. One in 1999 and one in 2000. A check reveals that these are actually in Pleasant Grove Baptist Church elsewhere in the county. Yes, those are duplicated there and yes, merges have been submitted.
These still leave nagging questions. The last actual burials too place in the later half of 1979. The last prior to those were single burials in 1967 then 1965. It is only when we go back to the 1950s that we see any kind of regular activity in the cemetery. What condition was the cemetery in in the 1970s? Was there any question about burying anyone in it?
I can understand why these last two people would desire to be interred here. One is with his wife and daughter, both of whom he lost in the 1930s. He rejoined them after 45 years.
The other has parents and siblings here. I cannot determine if he ever married and had children.
I wonder if anyone knows when a burial is the last that will ever take place in a cemetery. When this last burial for John Clayborn Snead (interestingly his draft card give his name as John Clayton Snead) was last to rest in October of 1979 was it clear that he would likely be the last burial here? What did the cemetery look like?
I know from personal recollection that the area has changed dramatically since then. Both the blessing and curse of being an old fart.
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