Walk With Me to the (Almost) Forgotten Cemetery. Photo-Plentiful Tour.

Awhile back @mountainjewel made a post about walking through a cemetery, and I'm finally delivering on my promise in the comments to write about our own local, old cemetery.

All photos are mine, are edited for privacy, and were taken a month ago, last week, and yesterday.

Gate to the access road. Looks rather neglected, doesn't it?

This 200(?)-year-old cemetery is buried (no pun intended) deep in the woods...

The only reason the road is this worn is due to the surrounding neighbors going hunting and harvesting firewood and such.

Cemetery entrance. The original fencing and gate are in shambles.

...near the edge of a 300-foot bluff overlooking the river...

We like to come here occasionally and check out the view

We had no idea this was within walking distance of our house when we moved here!

...and it seems to have been largely forgotten.

Only a few people have been buried here in the past 20 years.

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As a matter of fact, the cemetery is on our neighbors' private property and literally belongs to them, although they are required to allow public access to it (and they have given several of us neighbors permission to access the rest of the property too). Can you imagine owning an old graveyard? They haven't been able to find much information on it--the maintenance fund they tracked down was defunct, the last trustee of it was themselves deceased, and the history behind it elusive. Certainly no one is maintaining it now, and no one is leaving recent evidence of visiting any of the graves. I might poke around county records at the library for more information sometime.

Little Man and the grandest headstone in the place. Robert was only 25 when he died.

One side of the cemetery has a whole row of graves belonging to the family for whom the cemetery is named, and it boasts the largest and most elaborate tombstone pictured above, carved to look like a tree trunk.

The detail, down to the tree rings on the branch ends, is exquisite!

The other tree trunk headstone in the cemetery. None of the other gravestones are out of the ordinary like these are.

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The side of the cemetery closest to the bluff is absolutely full of unmarked, rough slabs of rock most likely harvested right there on the bluff edge, and placed with no apparent attempt at order. Sunken, tilted or fallen, worn by time...

Many more small and/or fallen stones are hidden in the leaves, and disappear completely when the grass grows up.

There is no telling when these unknown people, undoubtedly early settlers, began to be buried here. Did this start as a family burial ground and then expanded, or was this established as a graveyard for a whole settlement? Was there originally a chapel here?--the backcountry roads around here are full of tiny old churches. Why was this now secluded and lonely spot chosen?

Looking across from the bluff side

The oldest inscriptions on the stones that are actually carved--and that are located within the "old unmarked graves" area--are from the mid and late 1800's. This is the oldest that I've found.

This is on the front of the big fallen gravestone in the previous photo.

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There are many, many children buried here.

This, to me, embodies the most tragedy, from what little I can glean about the people here by merely reading their gravestones. Between February 1905 and September 1906, this family lost 3 children: two 12-year olds and an hours-old newborn. What a heartbreaking year and a half that must have been...and it certainly makes me feel humbled. One side of this stone says "Children of (Parents' Names)" and each of the other three sides is dedicated to the children, Forest, Nellie, and Willie. There is no sign of the parents' graves.

It's sobering to watch my own children, full of life and vitality and color, walking or romping past the somber stones where other little youths are forever still. It's easy to go to a graveyard and have the gray quietness of the stones impress upon you that the people beneath them were much the same. But they weren't! The children buried here were just as bright and lively and noisy as mine, and it makes me especially sad. As much as the simpler life of "the olden days" might seem more attractive sometimes, an old graveyard like this one forcefully reminds you of the higher mortality rate for young people then.

I wonder what she looked like?

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On one side of the graveyard is a trail winding sharply downhill through the woods to the edge of the bluff.

Quite fitting that mountain laurel abounds along the trail.

Like gigantic gravestones...it's easy to see where many of the rocks in the graveyard came from.

Stepping out on the rocks at the edge gives you the lovely view of the river below, that I showed at the beginning of this post. I wonder if the graveyard originally had this view, too, before all the trees now along the edge grew up?

Full and muddy river after several days of rain earlier this spring.

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Memorial Day visit

There are 3 veterans buried here. There is a WWI veteran, who is part of the family namesake row. Then there are two Vietnam veterans. One of them is the most recent burial in the entire graveyard, on the farthest side from the bluff. The other has the honor of being one of only two graves showing signs of somebody paying respects by decorating it in the past.

I hadn't had the foresight to buy some American flags before this weekend, but I raided our backyard flowers, and made up some little bouquets for the veterans. Pixie went with me, and we respectfully "decorated" their graves.

Our pastor talked on Sunday about how Memorial Day was originally established as Decoration Day after the Civil War, because the purpose was to go out and decorate the graves of Civil War soldiers with flowers. Over time, the name changed to Memorial Day, and it grew to include all deceased veterans.

Thank you all.

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Time to leave.

"Gone But Not Forgotten" is inscribed on some of the stones...and while my initial reaction was "but they are forgotten," on second thought I guess they aren't in a way, as long as folks like me (and now you) can come wandering by, read the names and dates, or even gaze at blank rough rocks...and wonder and speculate about who they represent.