Samuel Carter Cemetery - Part II

Combing Through The Trees

We were so relieved to actually find a cemetery after hiking what seemed like miles up the hill, we didn't even worry that it looked like only a few grave sites. The small clearing was very pretty anyway, and we could declare a victory. So we set out to photograph the stones.

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As we got up into the clearing more, we saw some huge stone pillars back in the trees. They looked like part of a gateway almost. A little surreal, like a scene from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. (Or at least the way I pictured the scenes reading the book as a child)  Joseph related the larger monuments to chess pieces, a bishop and a rook.

We started towards the pillars, and noticed a few more grave stones on the way. Samuel scrambled around between the pillars and found the inscriptions, which of course proved them to be massive monuments.

When we got through those stones, we found marker after marker stretching back into the woods. The trees and bushes had grown up so much, it was a jungle. There were tree branches down, massive grape vines, brier bushes, and whole trees down. It was a riot of vegetation, old and new.

It felt like a Harrison Ford movie. Sherry might change our blog name to "Indiana Stones" or something after this experience. What fun it was!

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We ended up finding about 30 some grave markers. More than that, really, as some were face down, or covered with fallen trees too big to shift. But amazingly most of the ones we could actually see the front of were legible.

There was a little fenced-in section you can see here. I think this one had the Coleman monument.

There was a section with Samuel Carter's grave. He has two markers - an earlier one and one he shares with his wife.

We also found two markers for Nannie Wood, one with her husband Caleb. We found Nutters, Skaggs, Mosleys, lots of Carters and Eatons, Colemans, Beckelhimers, an Akers, an Adkinson, a Tincher and an Amick.

We knew there were going to be some interesting stories when we started researching these people. But little did we know how much we would find.

Continued soon...