Sunday, September 20, 2009

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)

3 comments:

Libby said...

We have some very old looking cemetaries near us that I hope to visit sometime. Driving by they look well tended with lots of flowers and flags - but they look so old. I wonder who is doing all that decorating.

cockermom said...

These places always look so peaceful. I sometimes feel guilty when I have to go to a funeral for disturbing the peace. We have a lot of very old cemeteries here in Terre Haute, one of them is famous for being haunted!

MightyMom said...

if you wanna....try doing a rubbing of the stones you can't read....the most amazing things can show up.

maybe that woman ended up not being buried with her husband...perhaps the widow married again later.