At least the weather was in my favor. Not too hot, not too cold, and no rain for over a week so no mud. Briars and brambles, on the other hand, lay in wait for me.
Even with knowing the almost exact spot of the cemetery it takes a few minutes of searching coupled with a LOT of muttered obscenities caused by the brush (and a few nasty spiderwebs) to locate the first of several headstones. And a deer stand. Obviously this has long since ceased being used as farmland.
It doesn't take long to realize this is clearly an African-American cemetery. If you have spent any amount of time in such cemeteries in the Southern United States then you will recognize certain patterns and traits. I do not know the reasons for these though I can imagine many. All with equally strong logic. Some of the more common traits are:
- Few, if any, commercially produced headstones or monuments.
- A significant number of graves marked only with 'temporary' grave markers of various forms. Those from the early to mid 1900s are often a paper form behind a glass plate (at least that is how they began - few are even remotely intact today). These transitioned into templates with individual metal letters inserted into lines much like type from typesetting.
- Many graves with concrete slabs on top. Mostly these are uninscribed or unadorned save the few with hand etched names.
- Concrete headstones created by setting individual inverted characters in a form (picture setting individual type for printing, but on a larger format and using poured concrete instead of paper and ink.)
- Iridescent glass jug shards atop a headstone or the grave.
- Few dates for births.
This site has all of these indicators. And there are even a couple of the paper cards surviving in large part in their original frames!
I would include an image of the sunken graves, but frankly with all the leaves and pine straw on the ground the photos do not convey reality very well.
As I systematically make my way around the area I notice that there is a clear and obvious pattern to the graves. This looks almost as formally laid out as a modern cemetery. And it is much larger than the average abandoned cemetery in the wider area from the same era. There are almost 50 marked or identified graves and probably at least 150 obvious unmarked graves! It is far out in the boondocks (Consider this: The area is rural and remote today. Imagine how remote it was a century or more ago!) abutting a gravel road, and across from a small and still maintained family cemetery.
Several tumblers start falling into place. First, the road and the family cemetery bear the same name: McWhorter. It is clear from the dates, monuments and inscriptions in the family cemetery that this is a White family. Second, there are a couple of markers in the unidentified cemetery with the same McWhorter, one for a person born in 1829. Third, there are a over a dozen marked graves for individuals born prior to 1865 with most dating to the 1840s and 1850s.
I think this may well have started out as a slave cemetery. I need to do more research to be certain, but it is a strong possibility. To an almost certainty these Black people born before 1865 were born into slavery. Remember that as chattel, slaves had no surnames. Those were only adopted after emancipation. And it was not uncommon for newly freed slaves to adopt the surname of their former masters. Even if the cemetery was not originally for slaves, some of the early burials in it were almost certainly former slaves. The names coupled with the birth years, the race, and the location make any other reading of the facts highly unlikely.
But burials continued well into the 1940s (possibly the 1950s). Surely there is a recorded name for the cemetery somewhere. I make notes of the various funeral homes evident from the various markers and start searching. Some of the businesses appear to have closed operations. But at least two are still in business. A brief call to the first and I learn all their records that old were transferred to storage and lost in a fire. The second call is more promising. They have the records going WAY back and ask that I drop an email asking for the data and say they will be happy to look into it.
Email sent immediately asking for cemetery name, list of interments, and/or any maps they may have of the site.
But my research doesn't stop there! I manage to find at least one death certificate and one obituary for persons with markers in the cemetery where the cemetery listed is "Mt Zion".
Interesting. There is another cemetery less than half a mile away recorded as "Mt Zion Baptist Church". This is not a coincidence and worthy of a visit!.
Ordinarily I would give links to Find A Grave for these cemeteries. But as I am strongly considering submitting updates to Find A Grave to change their names and descriptions, doing so right now would be unwise. The links would become invalid if I submit the changes. If you want to find them as of the time this is published then search for 'Unidentified' or 'Mount Zion Baptist Church Cemetery Main ' as the cemetery name and Oglethope County, Georgia as the location. Unidentified is approximately a half mile NNE of Mt Zion with the McWhorter Cemetery being just across the road from Unidentified. That should be sufficient detail to allow you to find these locations if you really want to.
Oh, to add to the fun, someone has created yet another Mt Zion cemetery almost in the exact spot as the 'Main' cemetery and added 6 memorials to it. 2 of those are clear duplicates of marked graves in the "Unidentified", two should also be there based on death dates, and the remaining two obviously belong in the "Main" cemetery. Yes, I am working to get all that cleared up.
Now assuming for the moment that this Unidentified site was indeed the Mt Zion Baptist Church site once upon a time it is not an unreasonable hypothesis that the church relocated at some point in the mid 1900s with burials starting about the 1950s in the 'Main' site.
A site visit finds that there are the remains of a church on the 'Main' site.
I think we can safely say that this place has seen better days.
The cemetery itself is at least semi-maintained, even if the old church is not. There are relatively resent flower placements and the grass is more or less cut recently. But, alas, there is no cell signal. So I set about photographing what markers there are. That takes some time. Find A Grave has about 150 entries and I know from experience that that is not a complete reckoning. (I ended up adding some enough memorials to bring the current count to 200! And I added photos to a LOT of those already existing).
Research upon returning to the warren revealed some important facts. Mainly that the building is in fact a church, It appears on maps of the area as early as 1955 with the cemetery not apparent (though there could be graves under the cloud cover) named as Mt Zion Baptist Church.
There is a last piece to the story I haven't shared yet. And it may prove to be the proverbial nail in the coffin!
I took a different route leaving this time. More unpaved back road driving that eventually returned me to paved roads. Basically I continued N-NE on McWhorter Rd until it terminated at the intersection of a paved road. From there I turned left (N-NW) back toward the main throughway, GA-77. Almost immediately I passed a small church. I could not help but note its name: Mt Zion Baptist Church! And it has a small cemetery (GROAN!)
Next item on the research list is to drop them a note and see what they can tell me of the church's history. I can't think that this is anything but this being the third location for the church over the past century and a half.
No comments:
Post a Comment