The Good and the Ugly, and the Not Too Bad

The Good

 Another day locating graves of distant kin took me, again, to a family cemetery I never heard about before. Turns out that Br'er has a veritable bunny-load of family cemeteries dating from the earliest days of the area. Most of the counties down in these parts were created in the early 1800s and Br'er's ancestors were among the first to jump into the area. And they bred like, well, rabbits. As a result they started various and sundry family cemeteries as they spread out.

The initial goal was to find a cousin, the granddaughter of one of Br'er's 5th Great-Grandfathers. The description mentioned that it was about 100 yards back off the road. Great. Cow Pasture, here I come!

I was pleasantly surprised to find a VERY well maintained little site, fenced off from the surrounding cattle. Most of the time I have to fight weeds, briers, brambles, and other such growth to reach the graves. Not so this time. Drive right up to an actual gate and walk in. It looks like a professionally maintained commercial cemetery! Mowed grass, open space, gorgeous place!

As there were only about 120 graves recorded, auditing the entire place only took an hour or two to complete. And there were some 8 or 9 memorials that were not in Find A Grave yet. When I was done, everyone was identified and GPS tagged.

There was even one marker with a symbol that we have never seen before:

We have seen various examples of the Pointing Hand before but never one holding a Cross. And if you are curious, yes, this person passed away at age 25. Sad, but never as sad as the numerous graves of infants and children that are inevitable in these cemeteries.

Good deed for the day done, several hours of daylight remaining, and better weather than I deserve, I decided to see if there were any additional cemeteries close by. Especially any with open photo requests. There are two within about half a mile, both with requests. Excellent! And they appear to be from the same core family. Plus, they appear to be related to at least one person who married one of my distant cousins.

Being a bass-ackwards type person I naturally head for the second cemetery first. Not only is it closer but it only has 8 listed graves so it should take mere minutes to investigate and audit. I always prefer to complete and audit once I start it. Especially in these remote locations that take an hour or so to reach.

The Ugly

I knew I should have brought a sharp machete.

Ok, it wasn't that bad. But there is enough growth that a machete would have been useful. And true to the description, it was off the road and in the brush. At least a couple of markers are visible from the road.

Note the large headstone just left of center in the last photo. I was standing on the other side of it at one point updating some information on my smartphone. I was close enough to it that I could easily rest a drink on top of it without moving. As I stood there I heard a rumbling kind of noise. As I had not had anything to eat that day (don't ask!) I merely attributed the sounds to my stomach making its emptiness known to all.

I then moved several steps away from it and heard the sounds again. But this time they were further away from me and seemed to be emanating from the headstone instead of me.

To steal a line from Richard Pryor's character, Mudbone, "That's when I put my hand on my gun, your honor." (Yes. When I am in these remote location I carry a firearm. Especially when I am in these remote wooded locations.) Hearing scratching from graves is somewhat unnerving. I am only glad this was full daylight and not after sunset! Casting my eyes about I spotted a rodent burrow. Ah-ha! There is the fecking culprit. Had that little bastard poked his head out I would have shot him for scaring the hell out of me!

The unwritten stories from these places always fascinate me. This place had several. Right up front is how one man came to have more than one marker. The first was clearly his original headstone placed there contemporaneous to his burial. The second was his VA issued later for his service as a Confederate Soldier. 

Yes, the US Government issued (and still does under the proper conditions) grave markers for Confederate Veterans. Most people are not aware that a law was passed making Confederate Vets US Veterans for these and other purposes.

Another question was what was the cemetery like when the last burial took place in 1931.

I note that some one has placed an infant listed as buried here based on the headstone in another cemetery entirely. Things like this I note to follow-up on to get corrected in Find A Grave when I am back home and in front of a real computer. There are also about 5 obvious unmarked graves as indicated by depressions in the ground with accompanying field stone markers. I add these to Find A Grave almost doubling the number of graves in the cemetery.

The Not Too Bad

From there it is off to the other cemetery from the same family. It is considerably larger with greater than 200 listed graves. 

Now a bit of experience in the fine art of Cemetery Cavorting has taught me to took at all the data before I move to a location. Especially when the on-line map show me that I have to traipse across a pasture to get to the location. In those moments I make certain to look at the wider map and satellite view of the area. Sure enough there appears to be a drive way accessing the site and it should be about 100 yards BEFORE the routing software tells me to go.

Yup. Driveway. Feck. There is some seriously high grass between the wheel ruts. Note to self: Go slow and take extra care. If this is not the right place then I could be force to back out - there may not be space to turn the car around.

Sure enough, some 200+ yards off the road is the cemetery. And it is the second largest family cemetery I have ever seen! I just hope I can complete auditing it before I have to leave. Fortunately for me there is ample open space to park and turn the car around for my departure.

This is no normal family cemetery! And it is active! I find one grave dating from Aug 2019. There is plenty of open spaces for additional graves and there are pipes driven into the ground in a pretty obvious effort to mark off individual plots of multiple graves. 

I was not able, alas, to fulfill the photo requests. Those are for graves dating back to the early and mid 1800s, While there are several graves marked and unmarked that could date from that era, there are unfortunately none with surviving markings that I can attribute to any of the requests.

It is obvious where there would have been something originally set into the markers listing the deceased's Name, and Birth and Death Dates. Sadly, all that information is long lost.

Equally sad at the children's markers that not only cannot be read in their present state, are literally 'decomposing'. I tried to move one in order to attempt to read it only to have the stone literally crumble in my fingertips.  It was like trying to pick up a dried sand castle. Any coherence it once had does not survive touch.

I could make a stab at identifying them as a group based on where they were in relation to other nearby markers, and by whose graves I did not positively locate. But that would be all. There was no way to positively deduce which grave was whose at this point. 

I was able to complete the audit with plenty of light left. But it took a lot out of me to do so.

One thing kept gnawing at my thoughts the whole time. It was only when I was getting ready to leave that what had been teasing my brain the whole time was a large, old oak tree one the edge of the space. I finally realized that it reminded me of the Whomping Willow from Harry Potter!

At least it was not taunting me with the sounds of burrowing rodents!