Oh, Captain! My Captain!

A preface: The phrase from Jurassic Park was "Life finds a way." The phrase from The Warren is "Life gets in the way."

This entry was started more than six months ago. It was shunted aside and left unfinished for too numerous to mention. I am in a "get things done" mode these days, so I am going back and either completing or deleting anything I started and left unfinished. 

Fortunately, this was mostly done, so it was really just a matter of adding the photos and touching up the text. 

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Poetry is, by and large, not my thing. So it is more than a little noteworthy when I reference someone like Walt Whitman. Be properly impressed.

I have a friendly competition with someone I have never met to see who can locate and photograph cemeteries in the counties where many of my ancestors resided. He is also aware of my efforts to clean select (Read: Interesting yet abandoned and hopefully historical) to properly clean headstones.

A few weeks ago, he suggested a stone that needs cleaning. Badly. And he was right.

Like so many other soldiers of the Revolution, Philp Tigner was awarded land on the frontier of Georgia. Finding details of that service is rather frustrating. While I am sure there are more details somewhere in a book on a research shelf, the best data readily available online comes from the Sons of the American Revolution organization's Patriot Research System; "He served in the Virginia Troops and also was Captain of the 5th Company of the 2nd Battalion of Georgia Troops." 

Was that to indicate that his service in the Georgia Troops was during the revolution? Or after? The database does not make that clear. The answer is probably in that book on a shelf somewhere. Then again, it may not be. This could be one of those things lost to history. Try as I might, I could not readily locate anything specific about his service.

What is clear is that he fathered some 13 children with two wives (Sarah Forbish and Nancy Hall). It is worth noting that there are probably a few additional children not recorded as they did not survive. The children, by and large, were born about every year. Except that there are a few substantial gaps between some of them. Having almost all one's children survive into adulthood in the late 18th to early 19th centuries would be close to a biblical miracle. I would not be at all shocked if the actual number of children was closer to 16 or 17. Or even more. But those names and dates would only be recorded in the family bible if they were recorded at all.

I muse about possible additional children in defiance of a letter in 1881 by one of Philip's sons, Young Fletcher Tigner, when Young Fletcher was about 78 years old, to one of his own grandsons relating some family history. In the letter, Young Fletcher names all 12 of his siblings and half-siblings, and names two who died in infancy. So that, at least, comports with the norm of families losing infants at the time. Still, there remain those nasty gaps between births - some a decade or so before Young Fletcher was born. And I know all too well how not every family story is passed along, so it may be that Young Fletcher only passed on what he was told. Or what he remembered. Or maybe he had it all correct. Who can truly say?

After passing away in 1819, Philip was laid to rest on his farmland, as was the custom of the time. Well, more a necessity than a custom back then. There were few alternatives. And the alternatives that were available were often impractical due to distance and the difficulty of travel in the area. Yes, there was the occasional graveyard at a church. But there were few churches, and they may be a good distance away. Transporting a corpse wasn't the greatest idea. And delaying burial was unwise. Trebly so in warmer months. 

So it was that most people were interred on family land relatively quickly. 

It is worth noting that the records indicate that Philip was, in fact, considered a Reverend (probably a Methodist) and had played a sufficient part in founding a church that bore his name! Tigner Church. The church building no longer survives, and the congregation was merged with another church which was later merged with yet another church in the ensuing decades. I presume that the original Tigner Church either had no graveyard or, if it did, Philip or his family opted to not lay his to rest there.

Hot weather was not a problem when Philip passed. Heat is seldom an issue in January in the South. Then again, dirt roads are less than conducive to wagon traffic in the winter.

Whether by his wish or out of sheer necessity, Philip was buried on his land and a stacked rock false tomb erected over the grave. More than a century later, when such a thing became available, the Daughters of the American Revolution erected a marker at the grave. Apparently, this was later stolen or vandalized (destroyed), and some decades later a Veteran's Administration issued headstone was erected in front of the false tomb. It is this latest marker that we planned on cleaning.

The site has only one obvious and certain grave - Philip's. But there are several highly probable additional graves visible. Some with, some without what may be a fieldstone marking its location. Again, logic would dictate that other family are also interred there. At least the second wife, if not both wives. (The gravesites of the wives and many of the children are not known. His first wife, Sarah, is almost certainly not here since she and Philip lived many miles away in Green County at the time of her death.) And perhaps unrecorded children or other family. Past estimates number additional possible graves around 10. Sadly, Census records of the time list only the head of the household, so we have no way of knowing who these people might be.

Yeah. I think we can all agree that this one needs some cleaning.

You can see how wooded and wet the area is. This does nothing to enhance the looks of the headstone. I have to wonder if the stacked stones remotely resemble their original placement or they have shifted over the decades. Though at this point I can legitimately say centuries since it has been more than 

two hundred years since Phillip passed away.

The staining on the headstone ran deep. Even after thorough scrubbing and a couple of treatments, stains remain. It will take time for the D/2 to work its magic. Still, I think it is safe to say we made a distinct improvement.

Better, yes. But still a long way to go. The plan is to give the D/2 a few months to work before returning and checking the results. Next spring, we will return and decide if a second treatment is warranted.

We opted to leave the false tomb untouched.