A Walk In The Woods: Part Three
In addition to the vast number of unmarked graves, there are several things about this cemetery that were very interesting to me.
For one thing, I found headstones for veterans involved in three major wars. This includes both the Revolutionary War and the War of Northern Aggr-- Civil War. Not that I've never seen veteran graves before, of course, but I've never seen so many big wars represented in the same cemetery (well, other than Arlington, obviously, but to my knowledge, there aren't any Civil War soldiers in Arlington, either), and certainly not in a cemetery so small. Plus, the presence of a Revolutionary War grave this far south is...very much a rarity. It's clear from the dates that he didn't actually die in the Revolution, though; he must have retired from battle in the South. He's probably very lucky that he died before the Civil War broke out for real.
Interestingly, the Revolutionary Soldier's grave had been decorated for Memorial Day, but none of the others had -- not even the WWI vet. I thought that was kind of strange.
If you can't read it, it says:
Charles H. Goodwin
Pvt Co K 38 Regt GA INF CSA [that last part is 38th Regiment Georgia Infantry Confederate States of America]
June 2, 1845 - Aug 4, 1862.
That boy was barely seventeen when he died, most likely in battle.
At least his family was able to find him and bring him home.
It says:
"In Memory of Corporal
Moses E. Wells
May 13, 1899
May 21, 1918
122nd US Infantry
5th GA Company L"
I can't read the inscription on the web version of the picture, but I have it written down at the house somewhere. This kid had only just seen his 19th birthday, when he, too, most likely died in battle. Those are crossed rifles at the top.
* * *
I know it's kind of morbid, but one thing I always look for in cemeteries is the graves of children. I don't know why exactly I do this, but for some reason they're the most beautiful to me, maybe because they're that much more poignant. In any event, babies born in the war ravaged south--especially during the brutal summers--had the odds seriously stacked against them, so there are...a fair number of them represented here.
Lonzo C. Reeves, 3/12/1890 - 6/23/1891
His was the only headstone that looked like this, and he got a little holly plant, too.
Donald Stewart, Born and Died Aug 2, 1939, Asleep in Jesus
I don't know why the pinecone is there, but the placement is clearly deliberate.
There were six of these tiny little unmarked graves all in a row.
This little baby lived one day shy of two months, and didn't even get a chance to have a name. It just says "Infant of Ophelia Nash; Nov. 16, 1899 - Jan. 15, 1900"
This poor couple, the Iveys, had five children in a ten year period, and not one of them lived to be ten years old. Four of them died within a five year period, two of them not even two months apart.
1. Lena Ivey: 8/19/1875 - 11/1/1880;
2. James T. Ivey: 3/27/1877 - 9/1/1879;
3. John Ivey: 12/6/1878 - 10/29/1883;
4. Clinton Ivey: 10/20/1883 - 12/20/1883;
5. Edmond Ivey: 2/11/1885 - 9/11/1893.
Interestingly, that's not the order they're buried in. Starting closest to the mother's grave (of the two larger ones, the one on the right), they're in this order: 2 - 4 - 3 - 1 - 5. The mother didn't outlive her last surviving child by more than a year or two.
* * *
Some of the graves here are really perplexing. From what little information I could find on the internet, I have determined that one of the things that makes this particular cemetery so noteworthy is that it is one of the very few in the southeastern states that contains the graves of both rich white founding families and of slaves. I didn't know this when I went to investigate, though, so I was struck by the inconsistencies I found. Now I guess I understand at least some of them, but even so, there were some really unusual ones. Especially the last one.
This one appears directly adjacent to the Confederate soldier. At first I just assumed that it must have been his wife, but then I realized that a) he was seventeen (granted, there were a whole bunch of sudden weddings in the days leading up to the battle, but still. It was usually the girls who were underage...) and b) there are no dates on it. And it's not even that the stone is so sunken in that the dates have disappeared or that time has worn them away -- the surface is (relatively) pristine. So...who is Sarah Goodwin, and is she even buried here?
It's a tiny, rough edged stone and it's not even square. No dates, no names, just the initials, and even they almost look like they were hand drawn/chiselled by an amateur. I'm guessing this must have been a slave.
This one is interesting because of the way it was done -- the S at the top, in a circle. It's because of her last name, which I can't read, but it starts out STA. But then a couple of lines down, it lists her as the wife of somebody Goodwin. Now, that's really strange, especially given the time period. A lot of women's headstones are actually part of their husbands' headstones, and even the ones who do have separate headstones would have listed her married name. It would make sense if she'd outlived the Goodwin husband and gotten remarried --she did live through the Civil War, after all -- but then why would it list her as the Wife of the Goodwin guy and not the later husband? The only good reason I could think of is if for some reason her family had been more prominent/more important than the one she married into, but...there are Goodwin graves all over this cemetery and this is the only one with that STA name. So, I have no idea. But it's fascinating, anyway.
I almost didn't see this one--it happened to catch my eye as I was headed out of the cemetery, and I'm pretty sure the only reason I saw it is because I was slapping away the mosquitoes that were swarming around my legs. It says: April 16, 1955 - Bobby + Dad. Which is...already pretty unusual, especially when you consider that the script looks like it was carved by hand -- like it was drawn with a stick in wet cement.
But see... the reason I took the shot at this angle? Is because the "head" part of the headstone is blank. And the reason that it's blank is because there's writing on the other side --- this is the back of the baby's headstone I posted above -- the one for Donald Stewart who may have lived a few hours but was most likely stillborn (the "asleep in Jesus" line is what makes me think it wasn't a live birth). But that baby died in 1939, and the date on this side says 1955.
So...what on earth? I can't imagine somebody defacing an infant's tomb that way -- especially not in 1955, when the grave was already some fifteen years old. So...are they later family members who wanted that baby to know that his family still thought about him? The script is almost childish, but then I imagine that cement --whether it was wet or dry at the time -- is a difficult medium to write in. Was it maybe that it belonged to a different grave, and whoever has been taking care of the place/restoring it didn't realize there was writing on the bottom stone until after they'd already been affixed together? And the names themselves..."Bobby + Dad"...? I have... no idea, but I'd love to hear any theories you guys can come up with.
* * *
There's one more that I want to discuss/show you guys because it is --hands down --the most perplexing of them all, but this entry is plenty long enough and my speculations about the last one are like a page and a half all by themselves, so I'll break it out into one last entry.
For one thing, I found headstones for veterans involved in three major wars. This includes both the Revolutionary War and the War of Northern Aggr-- Civil War. Not that I've never seen veteran graves before, of course, but I've never seen so many big wars represented in the same cemetery (well, other than Arlington, obviously, but to my knowledge, there aren't any Civil War soldiers in Arlington, either), and certainly not in a cemetery so small. Plus, the presence of a Revolutionary War grave this far south is...very much a rarity. It's clear from the dates that he didn't actually die in the Revolution, though; he must have retired from battle in the South. He's probably very lucky that he died before the Civil War broke out for real.
Interestingly, the Revolutionary Soldier's grave had been decorated for Memorial Day, but none of the others had -- not even the WWI vet. I thought that was kind of strange.
If you can't read it, it says:
Charles H. Goodwin
Pvt Co K 38 Regt GA INF CSA [that last part is 38th Regiment Georgia Infantry Confederate States of America]
June 2, 1845 - Aug 4, 1862.
That boy was barely seventeen when he died, most likely in battle.
At least his family was able to find him and bring him home.
It says:
"In Memory of Corporal
Moses E. Wells
May 13, 1899
May 21, 1918
122nd US Infantry
5th GA Company L"
I can't read the inscription on the web version of the picture, but I have it written down at the house somewhere. This kid had only just seen his 19th birthday, when he, too, most likely died in battle. Those are crossed rifles at the top.
* * *
I know it's kind of morbid, but one thing I always look for in cemeteries is the graves of children. I don't know why exactly I do this, but for some reason they're the most beautiful to me, maybe because they're that much more poignant. In any event, babies born in the war ravaged south--especially during the brutal summers--had the odds seriously stacked against them, so there are...a fair number of them represented here.
Lonzo C. Reeves, 3/12/1890 - 6/23/1891
His was the only headstone that looked like this, and he got a little holly plant, too.
Donald Stewart, Born and Died Aug 2, 1939, Asleep in Jesus
I don't know why the pinecone is there, but the placement is clearly deliberate.
There were six of these tiny little unmarked graves all in a row.
This little baby lived one day shy of two months, and didn't even get a chance to have a name. It just says "Infant of Ophelia Nash; Nov. 16, 1899 - Jan. 15, 1900"
This poor couple, the Iveys, had five children in a ten year period, and not one of them lived to be ten years old. Four of them died within a five year period, two of them not even two months apart.
1. Lena Ivey: 8/19/1875 - 11/1/1880;
2. James T. Ivey: 3/27/1877 - 9/1/1879;
3. John Ivey: 12/6/1878 - 10/29/1883;
4. Clinton Ivey: 10/20/1883 - 12/20/1883;
5. Edmond Ivey: 2/11/1885 - 9/11/1893.
Interestingly, that's not the order they're buried in. Starting closest to the mother's grave (of the two larger ones, the one on the right), they're in this order: 2 - 4 - 3 - 1 - 5. The mother didn't outlive her last surviving child by more than a year or two.
* * *
Some of the graves here are really perplexing. From what little information I could find on the internet, I have determined that one of the things that makes this particular cemetery so noteworthy is that it is one of the very few in the southeastern states that contains the graves of both rich white founding families and of slaves. I didn't know this when I went to investigate, though, so I was struck by the inconsistencies I found. Now I guess I understand at least some of them, but even so, there were some really unusual ones. Especially the last one.
This one appears directly adjacent to the Confederate soldier. At first I just assumed that it must have been his wife, but then I realized that a) he was seventeen (granted, there were a whole bunch of sudden weddings in the days leading up to the battle, but still. It was usually the girls who were underage...) and b) there are no dates on it. And it's not even that the stone is so sunken in that the dates have disappeared or that time has worn them away -- the surface is (relatively) pristine. So...who is Sarah Goodwin, and is she even buried here?
It's a tiny, rough edged stone and it's not even square. No dates, no names, just the initials, and even they almost look like they were hand drawn/chiselled by an amateur. I'm guessing this must have been a slave.
This one is interesting because of the way it was done -- the S at the top, in a circle. It's because of her last name, which I can't read, but it starts out STA. But then a couple of lines down, it lists her as the wife of somebody Goodwin. Now, that's really strange, especially given the time period. A lot of women's headstones are actually part of their husbands' headstones, and even the ones who do have separate headstones would have listed her married name. It would make sense if she'd outlived the Goodwin husband and gotten remarried --she did live through the Civil War, after all -- but then why would it list her as the Wife of the Goodwin guy and not the later husband? The only good reason I could think of is if for some reason her family had been more prominent/more important than the one she married into, but...there are Goodwin graves all over this cemetery and this is the only one with that STA name. So, I have no idea. But it's fascinating, anyway.
I almost didn't see this one--it happened to catch my eye as I was headed out of the cemetery, and I'm pretty sure the only reason I saw it is because I was slapping away the mosquitoes that were swarming around my legs. It says: April 16, 1955 - Bobby + Dad. Which is...already pretty unusual, especially when you consider that the script looks like it was carved by hand -- like it was drawn with a stick in wet cement.
But see... the reason I took the shot at this angle? Is because the "head" part of the headstone is blank. And the reason that it's blank is because there's writing on the other side --- this is the back of the baby's headstone I posted above -- the one for Donald Stewart who may have lived a few hours but was most likely stillborn (the "asleep in Jesus" line is what makes me think it wasn't a live birth). But that baby died in 1939, and the date on this side says 1955.
So...what on earth? I can't imagine somebody defacing an infant's tomb that way -- especially not in 1955, when the grave was already some fifteen years old. So...are they later family members who wanted that baby to know that his family still thought about him? The script is almost childish, but then I imagine that cement --whether it was wet or dry at the time -- is a difficult medium to write in. Was it maybe that it belonged to a different grave, and whoever has been taking care of the place/restoring it didn't realize there was writing on the bottom stone until after they'd already been affixed together? And the names themselves..."Bobby + Dad"...? I have... no idea, but I'd love to hear any theories you guys can come up with.
* * *
There's one more that I want to discuss/show you guys because it is --hands down --the most perplexing of them all, but this entry is plenty long enough and my speculations about the last one are like a page and a half all by themselves, so I'll break it out into one last entry.