General @ Friday July 25, 2008 02:42 pm by WunderKraut
I love cemeteries. I always have.
My sister thought I was horribly morbid when we were kids, but I’ve always loved them.
Not any old cemetery, mind you. I love old ones. Even more than old ones, I love hidden ones. The ones no one has seen in years.
The most thrilling cemetery hunt I’ve ever been on was when I went searching for the ancient WunderKraut family burial plot on the long gone site of the Old WunderKraut Plantation.
It took me several weeks of prep work, followed by a few days in the courthouse. It all came together and I was able to find the site and see the graves:
See this post for more info.
Anyway…
When I was 10 or 11, my family drove to Atlanta to take my sister to the airport. We took the road from Albany to Columbus and then onto Atlanta. I’m not sure what they called the road back then, but now it’s known as 520.
On the drive up, I occupied myself by looking out the window and out of the corner of my eye, I caught what appeared to be a cemetery in the woods on the opposite side of the road. I excitedly told my Dad what I’d seen and asked if we could pull over. I was told no because we had to get my sister to the airport, but if…IF…I could find the place on the way home…maybe…we would stop.
I’m sure Mom and Dad were confident I would never find the site again.
On the way home, I kept a constant vigil for the cemetery. As we grew closer to it, I mentioned to my Dad that I felt it was close. I guess he must have slowed down, because when I saw it, he was able to pull off the road and into a farm entrance not far from the cemetery.
We walked around a bit and looked at several old graves. Then it was time to go.
Years later, I often wondered where that cemetery had been. I mistakenly thought it was on another road and would look for it every time I traveled that road.
Then a few years ago, I was heading to Lumpkin and driving on 520. I was bored, so I occupied myself with trying to remember where the cemetery was located. I would see a patch of woods with a farm entrance next to it and slow down. Nope, that wasn’t it.
Finally, I passed a spot that looked promising and made a mental note to stop on my way home.
Sure enough, there it was.
It was very overgrown and the only reason I saw it was because there had been a recent burial and the overgrowth was cleared out enough around the graves. I guess it’s an old family cemetery and some of the old grey hairs are wishing to be buried next to great grandpa.
On the way home from Dalton, I stopped at the cemetery to take some pictures. There are two portions of the cemetery that are sort of cleared. There are probably 20 visible graves. My guess is that there are many, many more hidden under the leaves and in the other portions of the property that are not cleared. As evidence, I found two very old graves (one from 1899) that were on the fringe of the clearing and there was evidence of other stones in the woods.
I did not venture far as the gnats, mosquitoes, spider webs and poison ivy convinced me that maybe I should come back in the winter.
There were many other depressions in the soil, indicating the possibility of other graves. I would love to find out who owns the cemetery and how many people are buried there. I would also love to clear the lot and fence it so that those buried there will have a proper burial.
I took lots of pictures and need help with some of the hard to read inscriptions. Anyone have a way to make them clearer?
Pictures past the break.
I have a close up of the last headstone because there is an epitaph under the dates. Click here to see if you can make it out. I sure can’t.
There was one more stone that I could not make out very well. If I had something to take a rubbing, I probably could’ve found out more info. Maybe this winter. Click here to see if you can play detective.
One last picture.
I sure love cemeteries!
11 Responses to “Ghost Hunter”
Oh man. This is so cool. I absolutely LOVE walking through old cemeteries. Even when there’s no personal connection, it’s really neat.
I pass an old cemetery on the way home from work. Sometime I plan to stop and just walk through it.
This is the one. It looks like it would be so cool to have the time to just walk through it.
And this is the gate I see from my commute road.
Hmm. Not sure why there was no link in that last comment. Here is the url:
http://www.sfgenealogy.com/santaclara/cemlaguna.htm
You should stop and look around.
When I was with the railroad, we were driving through some rural part of northern Ohio when we rounded a corner and up on a hill, with the sun shining down on it, was the prettiest cemetery you’ve ever seen.
I had to stop and look.
It was amazing. There was one set of graves from a family. It looked like the parents and kids and they all had the same death date. I can only assume they were killed in a car wreck or house fire. The dates were from the 1950’s.
I wish I had taken pictures of that cemetery.
Old cemetaries make me wish for the stories of those buried therein. We are all food for worms, as the movie says. Anything old is fascinating to me. Our lives are so brief, we just don’t often realize it.
I was watching ‘Wizard of Oz’ last night and realized, ‘man I loved this movie as a kid’. It was made in ‘39. When I was born it was already 31 years old. Watching it now, it is really strange to think that all of the stars of this movie are now dead.
Sobering thoughts.
Another cool thing about cemetaries is seeing how names have changed in 100 years. You just don’t meet many folks named ‘Phineas’ or ‘Zebulon’ any more.
Sorry, I suck at math. That movie was 29 years old when I was born.
I had a bunch of pictures from the town we moved from recently, including some headstones from the oldest churchyard in that town… And naturally, the computer ate the pix and erased the memory card. I got nothin’. I want to make a trip back to get the shots again: some of the headstones predate the American Revolution.
Dude, you definitely need to get back and take some rubbings.
Can’t be certain, but I may have found something. This may be a black cemetery.
I found an Alfred Hall (stone looks like it says Alford Hall) in 1900 census, age 75 (stone may say born 1825), race listed as black. Township listed as “Militia District 1092″ which includes Weston (just up the road from this cemetery).
John Williams - looks like he died in 1899. Can’t make out the birth year for sure, either 1861 or 1881. If 1881 (and slightly incorrect) may have found him as a baby in the 1880 census. But I think it’s actually 1861, and I haven’t found him in 1880.
This is fun. Go take some rubbings.
That’s awesome Ken! Given the type of headstones, I would agree this was probably a black cemetery. That means there are probably many, many more paupers graves out there with no headstones. Also, I wonder if there was a church at that location a long time ago?
I may do that this weekend. It’s just so damn hot and the bug are terrible this year. I can’t overstate how many spiders there were there as well.
We shall see.
Well, rat patooties…
I mentioned over at Kraut’s that I pass an old pioneer cemetery on my way home from work. I planned to stop some time and take some pictures sometime…….