The Mystery of the Smith Graveyard (Part 2 of a 2 Part Story-continuation of The Letter, 1862)
Ever since I found Rebecca Myers Price Davis in my genealogy as a teenager, I have felt an instant bond with her. She died in childbirth with my 3rd great grandfather, Nathan Edward Rebecca Lyon IV. Her father, Mark Price Davis (my 5th great grandfather), had left clues in all of his children’s middle names, I believe to help me find the extended line of Mark. Consequently, all the girls have strange middle names such as Christian, Davis, Myers, Russell, Capers, etc. When Rebecca died while giving birth to her little son, my 4th great grandfather, whose name was Nathan Edward Lyon III, decided to name their son after his beloved wife that died while giving him life. As one can imagine, no one ever teased Nathan Edward Rebecca Lyon IV about his middle name because they wouldn’t be able to talk for a week-their mouth would hurt so bad from Nathan setting things straight!
I had always wanted to find the grave of Rebecca and pay my respects. Over 40 years later I finally found a clue on the Internet leading to the whereabouts of Rebecca’s grave. Someone graciously had posted a photocopy of a photograph that appeared to me to be taken in the 1970s. Imagine some obscure person, a descendent of Rebecca, going to the Xerox shop and placing the photograph on the copy machine photocopying this photograph, all of the JPEG’s of the gravestone spread far apart. They wrote on the bottom of the paper for their citation, which was common in that day and age, “Smith or Stony Creek Cem Washington, Ga.” Here I had a very poor copy of Rebecca’s grave (and absolutely thrilled to have found that) and an obscure location: either the “Smith’s Cemetery or Stony Creek Cemetery in Washington, Georgia.”
I started searching the Internet for Smith Cemeteries. There were too many to number. I then started searching for Stony Creek Cemeteries. There were no cemeteries by the name of Stony Creek in Georgia. So: scratch that out. I went back to searching Smith Cemeteries. I decided to utilize findagrave.com. As all know who use that site, it’s not complete yet as it is still a work in progress. It is an excellent site. When a find is discovered it is outstanding because it typically provides Primary Source Documentation. I narrowed the search down by searching Wilkes County for Smith Cemeteries also checking once again for Stony Creek (which there were none). There were three Smith Cemeteries in Wilkes County and I scoured all of them.
The first two Smith Cemeteries were loaded with Smith’s but none of my family or people that I recognized. Recall from the post before, The Letter 1862 (part 1 of 2 part story), we now know that I am distantly related to a Smith by my auntie (Rebecca’s sister, Martha, married a man named George Smith). I finally researched the third cemetery. It was called the Smith Cemetery or Smith Family Cemetery and findagrave.com stated the cemetery was 100% recorded and photographed. When I clicked on the cemetery to open the data it listed only one grave. As far as research goes, if there is even one grave it is considered a cemetery no matter how small or big. This was the case with this Smith cemetery. There was only one grave. The exciting thing about this was the stone that was in the cemetery belong to a George Smith Sr.
When I had found the cemetery before it did not register anything to me and I did not look at it because George Smith did not mean anything to me. However, since I found the Civil War letter I now knew that Rebecca’s brother-in-law was named George Smith. I clicked on the headstone to see the photograph of it and to learn if there was anything written in the blog space on the findagrave website about this George Smith. Lo and behold I learned that it was George Smith Sr., father of George Smith Jr., and he had several wives. The second wife was named Sarah Blakey. The exciting thing was, when I found Martha’s husband George Smith and researched the family to learn how they were related, I discovered George’s middle name was Blakey. His name therefore was George Blakey Smith. This man on the stone was George Smith and he had a “Senior” after his name and his second wife’s name was Sarah Blakey! They had to be the parents of George Blakey Smith, which we now know was a “Junior.” Upon further study, I learned that indeed George Blakey Smith Jr. was listed as one of the children of George Smith Sr. and his second wife, and the name Martha Christian Price Davis’s name attached to him. The evidence was all in one place and located on a gravestone. One cannot argue with that!
What was perplexing was the fact that there was only one grave listed in the cemetery on findagrave. This cemetery was called the Smith’s Cemetery. It was located in Washington, Wilkes County, Georgia. According to findagrave there were no other Smith Cemeteries in Wilkes County. According to the website for Wilkes County, Georgia the Historical Society, there were no other Smith Cemeteries in Washington either.
It was time for a field trip! I told this fabulous story animatedly to my three grandchildren that I was spending time with, the twins and Jane, and asked them if they would like to go on a field trip hunting for a grave of their sixth great grandmother (my fourth great). I showed them the Xeroxed copy of the gravestone. They thought that was really neat and excitedly conveyed they wanted to go on an adventure and find Rebecca’s grave with me.
Early Saturday morning we left for our adventure. We drove out to the country to Wilkes County, Georgia, searching for the Smith Cemetery that housed the grave of George Smith Sr. and hoping that finadagrave might be wrong and Rebecca’s grave would be there too. I plugged the coordinates into my GPS. It took us about 3 ½ hours to get there.
When we approached the intersection consisting of two paved roads, there was absolutely nothing in that area. On the right-hand side of the road was a farmer’s field. In front of us and to our left and across the road there were only a bunch of thick woods. As we sat at the stop sign at the intersection, I noticed the names of the two roads. The road we were on was called Goldmine Road. The crossroad was called Stony Ridge Road. I could not believe it! Remember on the Xeroxed photo of Rebecca’s grave the notation was given that she was buried in either the “Smith Cemetery or the Stony Creek Cemetery” as they were not sure what it was called. And here we sat at a crossroads that was called Stony Ridge Road! We had to be close. My blood started racing and my heart started pounding. The children were totally engaged and were looking out the window trying to see grandmother Rebecca’s grave. None of us could see it. I turned right on Stony Ridge Road and told the children that we were going to stop at the first house we came to and ask questions.
Pass the field and around the curve was an old bungalow-style home on the right-hand side. We pulled into the driveway only to be greeted by a pack of dogs. Of course I did not get out of the car, instead I honked the horn and honked the horn until someone came out of the house to see what I wanted. And elderly gentleman came up to the car with his dogs and I roll down my window and explained that I was trying to find my fourth great grandmother’s grave, Rebecca Myers Price Davis and she was buried in either the Smith’s Cemetery or the Stony Creek Cemetery and I asked him if he happen to know where the cemetery was. He said as a matter of fact, he did know where it was and wanted to know if I wanted him to show me. I was so excited and said, “Absolutely.”
He jumped on his four-wheeler and I followed him in the car back up to that farmer’s field that was on the right-hand side of the crossroads. He pointed to the middle of the field and said that was the cemetery. All I could see was a bunch of woods. And then like a three-dimensional picture slowly coming into focus (like finding Waldo), a closer set of woods started to separate their selves in my eyesight and I could see that they had been camouflaged by the back-set of woods and looked to be one.
We all got out of the car and the kids started running through the fields as I walked along with the gentleman, Mr. Bill. Mr. Bill told me a very sad story about cemetery. He gave me the historical backdrop of who owned the land from the past and told me how he moved into the old bungalow with his folks in the early 1950s. The farmer’s field had been lost in a gambling game of cards in a bet and then sold later on after that and then again later on. The current owners had decided to plant their crops and started to bulldoze the headstones and graveyard. When Mrs. Brown, (an elderly lady who loved the folk in that cemetery and had appointed herself as caretaker), was so upset that she took the new owners to Court. I asked if she was kin to folks buried in the cemetery and Mr. Bill told me no. He said that she knew the folks very well had always taken care of the cemetery. Mrs. Brown won the Court case and the Judge ordered the owners and Construction Company to repair the cemetery and put up a chain-link fence around it. Unfortunately there was well over 25-50 unmarked graves that ended up outside the chain-link fence that to this day the owners plow over and plant their crop on top of. I actually stood in that area and could see the crop growing over these sacred unmarked graves.
By and by Mrs. Brown passed away and there was no one left to take care of the cemetery and it became a non perpetual cemetery. The cemetery was so overgrown with briars and weeds it was absolutely incredible and virtually unpassable. Mr. Bill had to use a lot of strength to get the gate open through the overgrown weeds that had grown intermittently through the chain-link. The briars were like spiderwebs growing in between the trees in the air and attaching their selves to all of the trees and branches creating stickers worse than boysenberry thorns. We had to whack down these sticker-webs so we didn’t scratch our faces and arms. My little grandsons totally got into the experience as well as my granddaughter, and they kept stomping down weeds and things so I could step over dead branches and limbs and weeds and be able to get through.
The first grave we came to was of course, George Smith Sr.’s headstone. This headstone was a more modern monument that was obviously placed there by his posterity in the last twenty or thirty years. It did indeed list George Smith Jr., the gentleman who’s Civil War letter I had found written in 1862 about his sons Thomas and James, and also listed my 4th great grandmother’s sister, Martha Christian Price Davis.
I knew I was in the right place. As I stood there looking at George’s grave I could see through the briars and weeds that there were more stones and realized real quick that the information on findagrave was INCORRECT-there was not just one stone in the cemetery but multiple stones, and the cemetery was NOT 100% photographed. In fact the next stone I found, I could not believe my eyes, was another sister of my 4th great grandmother. Her name was Jane Capers Price Davis. (Miss Jane married a Rorie and Rories are also laid to rest in this cemetery.) As I said before Mark, their father, had left clues for me in all of his children’s middle names, I couldn’t miss it. I was thrilled with this find!
I took a moment to stand there to let my eyes adjust to the darkness of all of the thick woods in this small cemetery and realized that George Smith Jr.’s son Thomas, the young man that died in the Civil War at the tender age of 19 years old, was also buried in this cemetery. Recall how I found the Civil War letter and was so touched to the very depths of my heart and soul by this family, and now in real life I was standing in the cemetery where their heartache took place over 155 years earlier. I took a moment in silence to pray for the souls of people that I had grown to love in such a short time.
Through all of the briars and thickets and weeds we found stones and small unmarked stones that represented babies, oh so many babies that died, so many babies were buried in this little cemetery-heartbreaking. Once again the heartache was poignant that had been felt by this early ancient family. I was beginning to wonder if I would find Rebecca’s grave and what happened to her headstone that was in the old fifty year old Xeroxed photograph, when the little boys called out, “Grammie Lynch, Grammie Lynch she’s over here, she’s over here! We found our grandmother Rebecca!” They were so excited.
I ran as fast as I could through the briars, stickers, and weeds with Little Miss Jane trying to help me along. I finally saw my 4th great grandmother’s gravestone, Rebecca Myers Price Davis. To my surprise and amazement, listed on the stone was a first husband that I was unaware of. The second husband on the stone was listed as well, my 4th great grandfather Nathan Edward Lyon lll. Of course, since then I researched Rebecca and her first husband, Uriah Farmer, and discovered they had five children together before he passed away. After that Rebecca married my 4th great-grandfather Nathan and gave birth to Nathan Edward Rebecca Lyon IV, and she died in childbirth at the young tender age of 33 years old. I was shocked and amazed to learn that Nathan Edward Lyon lll died one year later.
Who raised Nathan Edward Rebecca Lion lV? What happened to Rebeccas other children from her first marriage? These are still questions I need to research out and learn the answers. I had learned about Rebecca over 40 years ago and I had always felt bonded and close to her for some reason and finally after all of this time I was able to find her final resting place, her headstone broken off at the quick laying buried below briars, stickers and weeds in an overgrown non perpetual cemetery, still residing in the middle of a farmer’s field, the cemetery preserved because of the fight of one Mrs. Brown.
Mr. Bill looked at me and said, “Miss Julie, I am so glad that you came to pay your respects to your grandmother and aunties. It has been so long since these folks have had visitors. It is so important that they are not forgotten.”
I looked at Mr. Bill as tears rolled down my face my heart so full of love and compassion for these ancestors who lived such difficult lives and who knew such heartache, yet pushed forward and persevered to provide a path and way for one day, me to come along and have a life, preserving their memory, strength, and love of God, their blood and DNA which runs in my veins and body today. Yes my heart was full for the sacrifices that were made that somehow blessed my life so many years in the future.
I wonder of the trials and sacrifices that I have been called upon to go through and how they will affect and hopefully bless my posterity 150 years into the future from now. I hope I am not forgotten. I pray for goodness and blessings to come upon my great great grandchildren and 3rd great-grandchildren and 4th great grandchildren and so on in this life’s cycle as I stand with a full heart fulfilled. Thank you Grandmother Rebecca and Auntie Martha and Uncle George for your loving examples and lessons learned.
