Smiths. Fecking Smiths. The bane of all genealogists.
Smiths are ubiquitous. And like all families they use the same names generation after generation. And even multiple times within the same generation. Sussing out these familial relationships is like trying to work out identities of Irish Travelers. If you are 'in' the group then you know who everyone is. Otherwise you are faced with the prospect of working out which John Smith belongs where. It can be maddening.
Naturally this means that there are multiple Smith Cemeteries in any given county. There are some 10 cemeteries in Oglethorpe County, Georgia named or including the name Smith. You can imagine the joy of working through all that.
As I have told before, we 'inherited' a family cemetery in Oglethorpe County where at least two generations of my ancestors are buried. You guessed it. It is a Smith Cemetery, named for my paternal Great-Great-Grandfather's Father-in-Law, Arthur W Smith's line. Yay for me.
The cemetery was already recorded in Find A Grave long before I became aware of any of this. And as is all too often the case, much of the memorial data in it was incorrect. I have worked for years to correct as much of the mistakes as I can.
The last of these was a Smith who I could not find any way to link to my Smith line. There was no marked stone for him in the cemetery, nor is there any available record stating he was buried there. This was a case of someone speculating that this was the correct cemetery. There was nothing left to conclude but that he had to be buried elsewhere. Ostensibly in one of the other Smith or Smith-Adjacent cemeteries.
Knowing all this, it makes sense that I had on my Excursion List a Smith Cemetery that had long been recorded by the county historical society as containing at least two marked Smith graves. However it had never been photographed. Who knows? Perhaps there are additional marked graves there that, for whatever reason, were never recorded. It would not be the first time I encountered a partially recorded old cemetery.
Well, this was the day to find that cemetery! Of course it is far off the accessible path on what was once farmland accessed from a county road.
Note the operative word there. "Once"
Today the spot is hell and gone from anything remotely considered civilization. The land has reverted to timber and is clearly used for timber harvesting and deer hunting. Oh, and the county road? It is now closed off. So I was in for a cross country hike.
Lovely.
To add to the 'fun', there is zero cell service in the area. This meant my ability to use GPS on the phone to orient in on the exact spot was extremely limited. I had to work only with map data I already had on the phone. No new data was available due to no signal.
Now when I say no signal I mean no signal. None. Off the grid. I don't think even sending up a signal flare would communicate to anyone. This is the Boon-Fecking-Docks.
But I am a Man. I know what I am doing. I have spent innumerable hours in the woods. So off - an in - I go.
Permit me to pause here and digress for a moment. Prior to this specific endeavor I had already audited another cemetery. This one containing the extended family of an individual who married into one of my lines back in the late 1800s. It was relatively easy to find as someone has been maintaining it. Though I did take time to log that there are clearly 9 additional children's graves and three adult graves with only field stones. Doing some research on the family led me to conclude who one of the graves almost certainly belongs to. So I updated the records accordingly. So I had already been tramping in the heat for a good hour before going after the Smith Cemetery. Fatigue level is not too high, but I have exerted myself for a bit at this point. Bear that in mind as we continue.
I will share more on that front separately as there is more than a little something hinky in that place.
Now back to our current tale.
By and large the going was not too hard. The hunters have cut many tracks through the area to both access their stands and get their kills out. Sweet! Less pushing through the briars and bush (of which there was plenty). Still, all this entails stopping every few yards to reorient myself and stay on the general path to the recorded cemetery location. Add in to the mix that the ground is far from level and there are a few creeks and ravines or gullies to traverse. These mean finding a safe and wise place to cross each one. Often this means travelling wider afield than the straight line course then making my way back on track.
Given how remote and alone I am at the moment I made a greater than reasonable effort to not trip, fall, or otherwise have a mishap. If I go down there is no getting help and no one to find anything except my remains some months from now. Progress was slow.
Did I mention this is later in the afternoon? No? Well keep that in mind.
I did manage to locate the cemetery and photograph the two headstones. The cemetery itself though was much larger. Something on the size of the footprint of a small house. There are clearly dozens of graves here, though unmarked. And one is obviously from the 1920s to 1940s because it had a temporary marker with the burial details written on a paper card behind a glass plate.
Had.
The glass was broken and the card long gone. Only the metal marker remained. And these markers date from about the 1920s on through the 1940s or 1950s. Alas, this person, like all those who lay about him or her, is lost to time. In theory there would be a record of the burial at the funeral home that handled the burial. In practical terms that is seldom the case as the funeral home may be out of business and/or the records in some long term off-site storage site and they are less than willing to pull them and identify the deceased.
Having done all I could do for the day I started making my way back to the car. Being who and what I am, I opted to take a parallel track out rather than trying to precisely retrace my steps.
Something I had not reckoned on was that I did not have the GPS coordinates for my starting point nor did I have a way to retrieve them. Dead zone - no signal, remember?
No problem. I can make my way out, no sweat.
Correction. Lot's of sweat. It was warm and fat guys leak under such conditions. A lot we leak.
Somehow I managed to overshoot my major turn point by about a quarter mile. Fortunately this is almost all while following those hunting paths so the exertion was not as bad. Unfortunately this was in the last hours of daylight meaning that if I did not get to the car soon then I would be tramping in the woods after dark.
And I left the flashlight in the car.
Cue Alan Sherman singing about Camp Granada. "... where I might get eaten by a bear." Ok. There aren't bears in the area. But I AM rather thirsty. The water is in the car, and I would rather not spend the night in the woods. I came across a hunting camp consisting of three campers closed up for the year and resolve that worst case I shoot the lock off one and use it for shelter for the night.
Not gonna lie. When I first saw the campers I had visions of a Meth operation. Such was the seclusion of the site and the ... cultural ... nature of the overall area that a Meth Lab would not be a surprise whatsoever.
But emergency shelter for the night was not necessary. I backtrack and follow a road-ish stretch out. A few hundred yards out I spot familiar landmarks and know precisely how to get back to the car from there. Without more woods or brush.
Unfortunately there is a good half mile between me and the car at this point.
Fortunately I had a LOT of cold water in the car to slake my thirst. It took a few minutes sitting in the car with the AC running, sipping water, before I was in fit shape to drive my sorry ass home.
Maybe a satellite phone would be a good investment......
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