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.