Graveyards

In preparation for carving on my foam tombstones, I made a trip to a couple of nearby cemeteries, camera in hand.

There is an old abandoned graveyard on a small hill sandwiched between a backroad to the grocery store, and some railroad tracks that I have not seen used since moving here.

There are no signs, no formal entrance; just tire paths where hearses must have backed up to unload their cargo.

 Based on one of the epitaphs, I'm thinking this is an old Negro cemetery, possibly from a small church.

The epitaph is not spaced well--the words run on to the next line with no hyphens or regards to division of words.

 It reads: "Jackson Holback

Born April 15,  1833

Died May 11, 1915

Help to organize the

first baptist associat

ion for colord peop

le of this section

Aug 1867 member

of the mud creek ch

50 years"

I can't read the bottom from my photo, and didn't write it down.

Lots of the markers have the same last name, even if they aren't in close proximity to each other--Singletary, Simmons, Edwards--leading me to believe this was a collection of families, possibly from  the one-room country church about 1 1/2 miles from my house: Mud Creek Church.

Some of the headstones are very legible;

Others, not so much so.

Some cannot be read at all.

There are soldiers

And babies.

Elaborate stones

And simple markers.

I wonder about this woman:

Surely she isn't still alive.  Was there no family member left to carve her date of death on this stone?

I left this small, all-but-forgotten cemetery

 and drove to a larger one only a couple of miles away.

(to be continued)