Old Countryside Images

It's in the middle of my woods, Von. This area is full of local cemeteries. You drive down my road and there are maybe 10 little groups of headstones at roadside in front of houses. Those are well-maintained. Others are lost like this one.

I didn't even know it was there until the local Historical Society showed up with a local guy in tow. He recalled attending a funeral there in the 1970s, and the Historical Society maintains records of them...so off we went into the woods.

It is not a real old cemetery. The earliest grave is the late 1800s, and the most recent one is 1975. Most are from the 1930s to the 1960s, although there are a few depressions marked only with large rocks. There must have been a home site back there, since these are usually located near the house.

I'd love to clean it up, but not only are there established trees there, I cannot get any equipment up the hill and through the woods.

Here it is from the other side.

 

Sure.

I live in the predominantly black populated area of the county. There's lots of community here. People all help each other out a lot. Families go back generations. They've been that way with me since I first moved in. After a while, if you don't know everyone, you know a relative of theirs.

A friend from church is the go-to guy when people are calling from around the country tracing their ancestors. (There's lots of history here. The founder of my church had his license to perform marriages signed by then Governor Patrick Henry.) My friend owns a greenhouse, his father (pushing 90 years old) owned a car & lawnmower repair shop where my friend worked...they know everybody. I hang out at the greenhouse during off season and it's like Floyd's Barber Shop...just chatting with the locals who drop by. He's looked at the headstones and filled in a little history, mainly through inference.

As I mentioned, the graves do not date back to Civil War days except for maybe one, and I'm unsure of that date...the marker is [sadly] cracked. There are perhaps 3 graves that are unmarked, but since the marked death dates are nearly all of the 20th century, and there are only 3 unmarked graves, I assume that were not slave graves.

Here's where the cemetery is relative to the current house (my home), which is where the road ends. Way up on a hill. The group of us almost didn't find it:


The man who came here recalled that his aunt was buried in 1975 with a plain metal funeral home marker:




He still lives somewhere in the county. He was a kid when she died, so had no info on the others who are buried here. Most of them died before I was born, and the guy was 15 years younger than I. I told him he was welcome anytime he wanted to visit (as is his family), but he's not come back.

There's another grave with a similar marker, but it's rusted beyond recognition.

I started researching some of the names but couldn't find out very much.

One man was a WW1 veteran:



He was a member of the Pioneer Battalion. This was an all-black unit stood up in January of 1918, as best I can find out. Most of the members were support staff, while a small number were combat troops. I do not know what role this man played. He died in October 1918. I assume he was killed in action, given those dates.

My friend thinks that some of these granite headstones were refreshed...that their style postdates the death dates. He has done enough local research that he can look at a marker and tell you the era it was made in. Here's one of them. Imagine lugging it (and a bunch of others) up that hill:



Henson is a common name on these markers. It is a common name around here. There is a Henson Road not far from me. The prior owner of my property is buried in Henson's Cemetery (a large cemetery in someone else's back yard) up the road. There used to be a Henson's Store back in the day. No evidence of it remains.

I started going on genealogy websites to track these folks down, and saw more than one person seeking information on their Henson ancestors who left England in the 1700s (Lucy Henson is one name I recall.) If there's any connection to these folks here, it's through slavery.

I have a couple of neighbors down here with me. One house was the husband's parents, so they grew up right here, then built on the lot when they got married. They don't really recall much about the folks who are buried in the cemetery. They're my age, give or take a year, so were about 21 when the most recent person was buried there.

That's about all I know. There's another cemetery about the same size as you drive up my access road to the paved road. It has the exact same style fencing. There's no house nearby. Only one grave has a marker. He's a WW2 vet. The rest of the graves are depressions marked with large rocks. There are 2 other "cemeteries" off the access road as well, but they're really a group of 3-4 family in-ground markers on property no longer owned by family.