Unknown

But a possibility of being George.

The rural church where I grew up has an old stone-walled cemetery. In the 1970s, the wall was dry-stacked and crumbling. The oldest section of the cemetery held several rows of graves marked only by large rocks. Shallow sinkholes, very creepy, and one monument of the full-sized, above-ground type that made you think a vampire might be tucked inside gave the place a proper graveyard feel.

It’s much tidier now. The church hired masons to restore the wall using the original stones, with mortar added for security, and erected a new monument to the Unknown Dead—not only those unnamed souls who lay beneath rocks, but those whose headstones had worn over time into smooth blankness.

Before more headstones could be erased by the elements, my father created an Excel spreadsheet comprising all of the known data for each gravesite, with columns headed Name, Date of Birth, Date of Death, Age, Comments, Section, Grave #. I know this, because I inherited the spreadsheet with my dad’s laptop. I had no idea it existed until very recently. My own church is a tiny Quaker meeting, some 8 miles from the Baptist church cemetery. One of our meeting’s former Friends, who moved to Florida many years ago, called me recently to share his memories about the early days of the meeting’s founding in 1947. (I had asked via our newsletter if anyone had interesting stories to share; I’m often desperate for newsletter material.)

My Friend recounted many fond tales of folks, living and dead, who established the Society of Friends in our town, and then he branched off into personal family lore. He came from a long line of farmers who owned a good bit of land in the area, and at some point he mentioned that his great-great-grandfather and a few other family members were buried at a Baptist church in the area. “Last time I was in North Carolina my wife and I went out there to look for their graves,” he said, “but we never did find them.”

He sounded so mournful, I longed to help. Maybe my parents’ church was the one where they were buried. I gave him its name and general address, but he said no, he believed the church to be southeast and several miles closer to Chapel Hill. Later that day I got an email from him: Sure enough, his great-greats were buried in the cemetery at my parents’ church. Without making any promises, I decided to go hunting.

That’s when it dawned on me. Knowing my dad, there was bound to be cemetery information on his laptop, and that’s when I discovered the spreadsheet. A quick peek showed me that my Friend’s great-great-grandfather was in Section F, Grave #167. Of course, I didn’t know where Section F was, but I did know Henry. Henry is now in charge of the Baptist church cemetery. Within a few hours I had a photo of a map showing roughly 10 main sections with important landmarks—a path, a driveway, a particular large headstone.

Similar to the way we all hear our own name when spoken in a crowded room, one glance at the map and my eye fell on my family name in one of the new sections of the cemetery. The word ROCK, in tiny but formidable font, began inside the parental rectangle and protruded onto an adjacent plot. (My parents’ ashes couldn’t be interred at their headstone, which had been in place well in advance of their deaths, because of ROCK. That issue is how I came to know Henry.)

Older sections on the map showed far less detail, but had enough clues to point me in the right direction. An element of searching for buried treasure remained, but without the need to wander in the wilderness for 40 days. And lo, this very week I found my Friend’s great-great-grandfather! The headstone was difficult to read, and undoubtedly at one time had a great deal of carving above the area with the names and dates on it, but everything above the names had been worn to illegible nubs. Someday I may try to get a rubbing of it, if I can find the right sort of rubbing tool.

I like the old part of the cemetery. Time and weather have softened the stones, smoothed the hard edges, and toned down the sorrow into quaintness and charm. The newer sections with their clear, fresh headstones are more depressing. Too many names are people I knew and remember well: high school classmates, former Sunday School teachers, the man who owned peacocks and gave us honey from a hive. Walking among any of the graves, new or old, is problematic because it’s hard to tell where things begin and end. I’m afraid I cut across many graves while searching for the great-great-grandfather, and apologized constantly for trespassing.

Anyway, it’s simpler and almost as interesting to browse through the digital winding-sheet of my dad’s old Excel file. When he last updated it in 2022, there were more than 1,000 rows of information. Zip past the rows where the name reads AVAILABLE, and you’ll soon find interesting facts in the Comments column. A lot of complicated relationships are explained there; this is the first wife, this the second, this is somebody’s baby daughter or possibly a sister. Some of them give identifying characteristics from the monuments, like “Mason emblem, very crude.” My favorite stump and lamb headstone (pictured above) isn’t mentioned, and I can’t imagine why not.

Here are some samples from the Comments column. I’m nearly certain my dad wrote the last three.

2 years old. Fell off porch.

Wounded (in battle) 9/17/1862 & 5/3/1863; accidently shot himself, 10/23/1868.[1]

For 45 years a strict member of the Baptist Church.[2]

RESERVED - possibility of rock.

Unknown but a Possibility of Being George.

Red pink stone, unreadable and completely alone.

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[1] According to the dates, the battles would have been Antietam in 1862 and Chancellorsville in 1863. Date of death was 10/28/1868, five days after the accidental shooting.

[2] Probably part of the engraving on the headstone, date of death 1847.