Touchstone Cemetery

Ol' Br'er has visited many a grave in out of the way places. Many's the time he has pushed through the briars to find a long abandoned and nearly forgotten cemetery. So you would think he has seen just about everything.

You would be mistaken were you to think so.

Touchstone Cemetery was a new experience. Not totally new, mind you, but definitely different.

Now, Br'er was introduced to bizarre graves back in his baby bunny years. Mamma Rabbit used to shop at a now defunct mall. In the mall parking lot stood (and still stands) a large stone edifice that looks much like a pyramid with the top third neatly sliced off. Naturally he had to investigate. Slipping under the gate and up the stairs he found several graves. Apparently the surrounding land was once a family farm and this was the burial site for the family. Whether the structure was build by the family at the time, or whether it was later build to enclose and protect the graves when the mall was built is not clear. If the later, then the surrounding ground was excavated a good 12 feet or more leaving the graves elevated at the original ground level.

I will leave it to Atlas Obscura to give photos and descriptions for this site, the Crowley Mausoleum. But I have to be pedantic and note that this is clearly NOT a mausoleum as the photos will attest.

The point being that graves in a parking lot is not a new thing to Ol' Br'er.

But a cemetery in a gas station/convenience store parking lot, across from the pumps and next to the dumpster? Yeah. That is a new one.

Like the Crowley graves, the surrounding area has clearly been lowered, though only by about three feet. Getting into the cemetery is not easy. At least not old we old, fat folk.

The cemetery is the green trapezoid on the upper left of the image. And access is via the 'green' swath running from the lower left corner of the cemetery along the parking spaces to the road. This path starts at current ground level and gradually raises to the level of the cemetery. Assuming you can avoid the trash strewn about.

I was stunned to find that the grave of Lola Cantrell and Infant Son had never been added to Find A Grave.

I was even more stunned to find a marker dating from 1998! A full century plus three years since the last burial. Try as I might, I have not been able to connect this last burial with the Touchstone family at all. Indeed, I can find little on the individual at all. Though I am willing to speculate that it was a cremains burial rather than a full body interment. I have encountered this before where there is a century or more between burials in a cemetery. Those were all cremains. Frankly, given the cemetery locations involved, getting a casket to the site would have proven quite an ordeal. Just getting the headstone in place had to be no small undertaking.

So. Was Michael Battle a relative? A descendant? Or was this someone taking advantage of the circumstances of an open spot in a cemetery no one pays any attention to?

Care to write a story of a crime being hidden in plain site?