Surprise!

It is not often one is completely surprised. Old Br'er was laid out cold not too long ago when he learned of a massive cemetery in his hometown that he had no idea existed.

Now, to be fair, there are perfectly good and totally valid reasons for this gap in his knowledge.

If you are at all aware of history - particularly the history of the South, then you are aware of the Segregation Era. I daresay that there are far fewer folks reading this that experienced and recall those days than those who didn't. That makes it all the more difficult for the younger group to identify and fathom a cemetery like this one - a segregated cemetery - a Black cemetery.

Most Black cemeteries have commonalities that easily identify them. But not Gospel Pilgrim. It is truly different!

Rather than being small, it is somewhere in the 10-12 acre size.

Rather than the small, temporary marker provided by the funeral home or the inexpensive hand-made concrete marker from the funeral home so often seen, the marked graves are almost all large, professionally made stone markers.

Rather than one or two (if any) footpaths, this had complete streets (though they are in dire danger of being totally reclaimed by nature).

Rather than closed and abandoned, it is still active, much as its appearance tries to belie that truth.

Rather than dating from around Emancipation, it has at least a few antebellum burials, which would indicate free Blacks, something rare for the time and place.

Many of the headstones mark veterans from various periods.

Nothing a winch and a few strong lads could not set right.

One of the "streets" still visible, if not in good repair.

I cannot recall seeing a dove on the headstone of a 91-year-old before. Usually, these tend to be used on markers for younger people.

Service Battalions, Quartermaster Corps, Depot Brigades, and Pioneer Troops dating from World War I invariably refer to segregated troops. 

 

Not all answers address the question asked.

Ol' Br'er has told stories several times about a family cemetery that Pappa Br'er only learned bout just before Br'er was born. That cemetery has an aunt and uncle who died as infants (a sister of and twin of Pappa Br'er's father), and is a few hundred yards away from the homesite where Pappa Br'er's father and siblings were born. 

And, there is a family (husband - Harrison Lane, wife, and infant daughter) in the cemetery that Br'er cannot find anything linking them to his family. How and why they came to rest here is a mystery.

More to the point, Br'er has a 3rd Great-Grandfather buried there. And it is on what was his land that the cemetery sits. That gentleman is Arthur W Smith. And he is a brick wall in the genealogy work. The only thing known about his parents is his mother's first name and, based on census records, Arthur and his mother were born in Virginia.

Well, Ol' Br'er had a notion that maybe - just maybe - Arthur obtained the land from his father. And, maybe there would be a record of the land transfer. Naturally, these records only exist in the basement of the county courthouse an hour and a half away from the home warren. Even more fun, these are from the early years of the county (late 18th through mid 19th century) and are handwritten. Rapture! (Where is that sarcasm font?) The plan, then, was set to head down and trace the land ownership back to see from whom Arthur obtained it.

To paraphrase the illustrious "Doctor" Theodore Geisel - Dr. Seuss as you probably know him - "Oh! The revelations you will find!"

If you have never dealt with these old records, picture the massive tome a wizard would pull out to find an arcane spell in a movie. Some of them weigh more than 25lbs! Ol' Br'er seriously wondered if he needed a truss to carry them around! And, yes, they are DUSTY! Ol' Br'er's allergies were on full display. The sounds of sneezing and wheezing coming from that basement had to be alarming.

Should a body ever want to induce eye strain then they could scarcely do better than reading 18th and 19th century handwritten documents under poor lighting conditions. And the longer one spends doing this, the stronger the strain.

Br'er spent almost 8 hours reading the damned things.

Worse, he learned that Arthur did not get the land from his father. The brick wall stands firm, dammit. No, he bought the land from a man who purchased it a few years before from the son out of his father's estate.

Want to take a stab at whose estate the land came from?

Yup. One Harrison Lane (deceased). This answers the nagging question of how the Lanes came to be buried in the Smith Cemetery when they were not related to the family at all, not even tangentially. They were there first. So, by all rights, the cemetery should be the Lane Cemetery. Or perhaps the Lane-Smith Cemetery19th-century. This is not something anyone knew (or recalled), not even the county Historical Society.

Great. Now Br'er gets the joy of submitting an update to the cemetery description in Find A Grave. At this point, with the story being decades set in stone (so to speak), this is going to ruffle some feathers.

Having all this new information is a good thing to be sure. But not finding any answers that all the effort was supposed to uncover? That is maddening. As is the fact that, based on the date Arthur purchased the land, a few people presumed buried in an unmarked grave in this cemetery logically are not. They died before Arthur owned the land, so, logically, must be somewhere else. Damn.

In the end, the search remains as it started. There is nothing about Arthur's father - if he came to Georgia, or when he was born and died. To say nothing of his name! Hell, there isn't even anything on the family at all until 1840 by which time Arthur was almost 30 years old.

Of course, having the surname of Smith means searching for the father is kind of like searching for a needle in a stack of needles.

What a difference a few feet make

A week or so back, I wrote of Howard Bridge in which I mentioned a nearby cemetery of that family. So I thought I would share a little about that cemetery.

Or should I say Cemeteries?

To explain. Recall that much of the area ol' Br'er hops about is "out in the boondocks" to this day. The erudite term would be 'rural.' The less polite description might be 'middle of nowhere.' Directions to the place might start with "Go to the horizon and turn right."

If that is what it is like today, imagine how solitary it was for the first non-indigenous people to settle there in the late 18th century?

There is a church nearby, Cloud's Creek Baptist Church, that was founded in 1788. There are a few recorded or suspected burials at the church. But there is also a second cemetery for the church a short distance away.

You have probably already gotten to the next bit. Yes, it is literally adjacent to the Howard Family cemetery! In fact, unless you are sharp-eyed, you would not know there are two cemeteries here. Only a swath of open ground denotes the line demarking the two.

My eyes were immediately drawn to a tetrahedron stone. (I have only had the opportunity to use that word in certain gaming circles!) It is not a pyramid in the classic sense because there are only three sides visible at once. A pyramid has four equal triangular sides and a square base. A tetrahedron has four equal triangular sides.

I cannot easily date the tetrahedron, but the accompanying marker stating that there are slave graves here (obviously unmarked save by an occasional fieldstone) is clearly more modern. Still, this is only the second time I have encountered anything clearly noting the graves of slaves.
 

Ever Cenotaph?

Cen - Seen - It's the best I can do. Sue me.

Mrs. Br'er and I were on an expedition at Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta a while back, and something about these markers begged for attention. Nothing specific I could spot from a distance. Time to investigate!

Gloriosky, Sandy! Encountering one cenotaph is a rare enough thing. Encountering two, even more so. Finding two for brothers, almost side by side, who are both buried in the same distant cemetery? That's damned near a unicorn!
 

Jim

I am going off on a tangent here. No graves or cemeteries to speak directly to. But I came across a covered bridge after leaving the Howard Cemetery. (More on that at a later time) Surviving covered bridges are something of a rarity. That alone made stopping to see it worthwhile. 

But stopping became a moral imperative when I saw the name Howard and had left the Howard Cemetery just a mile or three behind me.

Today it is a classic 'bridge to nowhere.' A century ago, it was a crucial part of the local infrastructure. 

The two bollards (one does not often have an apropos moment to use the word 'bollards') make it clear that this is no longer an active bridge. There are other covered bridges in the general region that are still actively used.

Back in the day, there was a road on the other side of the bridge. Like so many other things, it has ceased to be used and is nigh on impossible to see any remanent of today. There is, though, a park and picnic area of sorts just past the bridge on the left. 

 Oh yes. Jim. "Why 'Jim?"" you ask?

Bridge-r. Jim Bridger.

Things That Make Me Wonder

Sometimes Ol' Br'er spots something on the webs that make his floppy ears perk up. Such was the case when he saw this grave marker photo a while back. (This has been sitting in the hopper to write about for some time!)

Now, Br'er has talked about "Retreads" before. But not, I think, about, what shall I call them? Three-treads? Yeah. That works! I get to coin a new word. Don't tell me if someone has already used it. Let me have my little moment of glory.

If you are familiar with the US Army Combat Infantry Badge (CIB), then you may know that it can only be awarded once for a given conflict. And that it was not even a thing until World War II. There are a limited number of people who have a third CIB award since it meant they had to:

• Be an infantryman satisfactorily performing infantry duties
• Assigned to an infantry unit during such time as the unit is engaged in active ground combat
• Actively participate in such ground combat

Until the current Global War on Terrorism era (I have NO idea if multiple CIBs may be awarded in that ear for different conflicts), the badge was limited to service in WWII, Korea, and/or Vietnam. Given those limitations, you can appreciate that there are relatively few people with a 3rd CIB award! 

Some of them may have left and returned to service and qualified as retreads. Maybe even three-treads. Either way, serving in three conflicts over a period of at least two decades is still worthy of note. I have encountered a few of the names on that 3rd award list.

But I have never before encountered someone who served in the Spanish American War, and both World Wars! That is service over four decades! 

Then I noticed Max's birthdate. July 1883. The Spanish American War lasted only 3 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days (Personally, I would have forced the end date one more day just for the symmetry. But I am an evil SOB). The dates were 21 Apr through 13 Aug 1898.

Any way you do the math, Max was in a war when he was 15 years old! And! If he was in during the first months (as would seem highly likely), then he was serving at 14!

I know he is not the only one to serve at such a tender age. But, damn! That has to be an elite group!

And, a last note, records give his retirement date as 31 July 1943 - two weeks after his 40th birthday. I would wager that retiring while WWII was still raging, and the result was still in question, had to be a bitter pill for him to swallow.