The old Griffin Farm, long gone..............

[Kelley (Texas)]

Late this afternoon, I drove over to the small family cemetery near the entrance to a neighborhood on Tavern Oaks Road to take a series of pictures of where a farm once stood. I remember this old farm because I use to ride horses through McAllister Park up to the west property line just across Mud creek. We would stop just short of the farmer

 

[Ron J]

I owe a few stories myself....just been extremely busy...

 

[Micheal_R]

One day, If I can find them [they are all in my photo albums somewhere, I will post a few photos of the cemetery at Cumberland. I wrote a story a while back about that town. But the thing that astonished me the most, was the ages of the 'children' buries there. These were coal mines and the astonishing waste of youth.... sometimes I just shake my head..

Calm seas

Micheal

 

[Kelley (Texas)]

I would venture to say that many of the old cemeteries that I find while looking for the remains of some old South Texas town are in poor condition. Many of them will have high weeds, damaged or missing tomb stones, fallen down fences, and on occasion are kinda spooky. One old cemetery over in Gonzales County that I found was one of those spooky type of cemetery....as many children as adults buried there. As soon as I entered that old cemetery, a chill went down my back and I felt very uneasy as if someone was watching me...needless to say, I did not stay very long and could not get out of there fast enough. There was a cemetery over in Wilson County that was in poor, neglected condition with weeds so high that you had to walk directly in front of the tomb stone to see what was inscribed on it. While I was walking through the high weeds, I suddenly came upon a fallen tomb stone with a copperhead snake laying on top of it...it slid down off the tomb stone, and went under it as I hauled butt out of there. You never know what you are going to find when you explore old cemeteries. Kelley (Texas)

 

[TexasCharley]

In ;a lot of cases, if you check the dates on the children's stones, you'll find that several died within a few days of each other. That usually indicates an epidemic of some sort. You'll also find that some much-older people died at about the same time. That would have been part of the epidemic. Things like cholera, pneumonia, one of the 'dread fevers,' diphtheria, & even polio, though it was called 'infantile paralysis' at the time, would hit a community & fill a lot of graves in a hurry. Most of those graves would be those most vulnerable--children, old folks, & women of child-bearing age who were either weakened by pregnancy or by having recently given birth.

 

[George-CT]

and interesting fence also. I find old grave yards interesting. I find some way out in the woods here, long ago forgotten. Sad to see them that way. I often go back and try to tidy up the grounds there. Usually under brush has grown up, at times small tree's.
Most are old stones hand done by what looks like the family. I guess these old New England farms changed hands enough that these grave sites get forgotten. Interesting to ponder what life was like then for these folks. Now that we are into winter mode I will see if I can get a few shots of some of them. Many are just stones but with no names on them. Perhaps they were carved on wood and have long since vanished.

Also sad to see areas where we used to play as a youth, changed into big developments or what have you. I know where I grew up often as a kid I would crave things into tree's and think, I can perhaps bring my kids back here someday and show them. Most of it in the immediate area where I grew up has been bough up by Phizer Corp and dozed down. Woods are gone, brook is actually still running there but under ground thru a concrete culvert. A person now would never know that it had frog ponds, and we would dam it up and swim in it etc.

George-Ct

 

[Wayne in BC]

too many forget the lessons of the past and where the come from. You certainly do not!
Nice post and thank you!

 

[Doc.]

In old cemeteries i have seen a lot of burials in 1918-1919 era , mostly younger people . my father said most of them died from the spanish flu epidemic . he lived thru that but didn't catch it . many of his friends and neighbors were not so fortunate .

 

[TexasCharley]

Look for stones that have no 'resurrection' sentiment on them & are outside what was originally the cemetery boundary. You can almost bet those were suicides. There's one in the Calf Creek cemetery in McCulloch County, Texas, that I've finally confirmed was a suicide--a girl in her early 20s. She probably drank a bottle of laudanum. That was the most popular method of suicide for women in the 19th & early 20th Centuries.

 

[Bayrat76]

We had one cemeteries on the ranch in Three Rivers. When hwy 37 was cut though the back of the ranch you can see the cemeteries on the east side of hwy 37. The other was a about 400 yards from the main house a woman born in the 1700's and died after the civil war. It has a high stone wall with a head stone lying on the ground. I was told there was a child buried behind the house at the turn of the century, in a unmarked grave. The place we lease now has a pasture called the cemetery pastor, the man we lease from told me he has never found it, but it was showed to be there on a old map. No telling how many forgotten graves lay out in the woods now.

 

[TexasCharley]

In a lot of cases, people were literally 'buried where they fell.' That waa particularly true if a body was found after several days, or the person died at a considerable distance from civilization. I found, one time in Palo Pinto County, what I believe was the grave of a cowboy who was killed by lightning. The stone was just a slab of limestone picked up & set up vertically. It had a cross on it, a representation of a cloud with a lightning bolt coming from it, & a brand I didn't recognize. In all likelihood the guy who carved the stone was illiterate, so by symbols he showed it was a grave (cross), how the man was killed (lightning) & where he was from (brand).

 

[MAcle1997]

Looks like it says MAR instead of WAR. Have to see it up close to be sure though.

Mark