The Beauty of a Cemetery

“Go rest high on that mountain, ‘Cause, Son, your work on earth is done.  Go to Heaven a shoutin', Love for the Father and the Son.”  Vince Gill wrote and recorded Go Rest High on that Mountain as he mourned the loss of his brother.  These are beautiful lyrics for anyone working through such a loss, as we all must at one time or another.  Unfortunately, somehow a lot of superstition has crept into our thinking about death and graves.  This superstition is of course unfounded, but it’s supported and exacerbated by Hollywood so I won’t try to fight it in this particular forum.  However, as with many weekend genealogists and hobbyist-historians, I spend a lot of time in cemeteries and that’s gotten me thinking about death and burial from a historical perspective.

John W. Key poses with his wife's tombstone.  Upon john's death, his children erected a new, double stone.  However, his youngest son was unable to part with the original stone and it now resides at his home place.  I wonder if someone will find it there in years to come and think the grave is there too?

We draw a certain comfort and closure from knowing where our loved ones are laid to rest.  An awful lot of people benefit from visiting those graves, especially during the very difficult early days of mourning.  This is common to humanity and no doubt it is the reason that historically only the most barbarous peoples have failed to properly bury the dead, even the dead among their enemies. 

As a research tool, cemeteries are a great source of information.  Usually we consider this information more trustworthy than government documents like census or immigration records where those people taking down information had little reason to be particularly accurate, especially with foreign names.  But when we die we hope to be among family or loved ones and those are usually the people who have the best information about us.  In my family research, one of my ancestors emigrated from Italy; I have found three different spellings of his name and several birthdates.  Since he died among his children, it seems safest to trust the dates and spellings they chose to use on his tombstone.

Historically, people have often accepted misspellings of their names.  Immigration clerks were notorious in their inability to decipher the myriad of accents and spellings.  Handwritten records were easily misread and hand-copied records could multiply errors.  One famous misspelling that stuck was Ulysses S. Grant.  He was born Hiram Ulysses Grant but upon entry to West Point, his name was mistakenly entered “Ulysses S.” and he was never able to get the error corrected.  Eventually, he resigned himself to just be Ulysses S.  Can you imagine how much easier it would be for people who were unfamiliar with the language and probably in near-shock by their new surroundings to just not worry about how their name was written?  Most of those poor immigrants were so happy to be on solid, American soil, they probably would have taken almost any name.

Dates are a very firm data point in our modern world.  We are frequently asked not just our name but our date of birth or social security number to differentiate us from a lot of other citizens.  However, in the not too distant past birth dates weren’t nearly so firm.  It seems like the birth of your children would be dates you would never forget, but the government advised my grandmother that her birth date was a couple of days after the date she had always celebrated.  Whether that was a clerical error or her family simply lost track of the exact date will never be known.  Maybe with eleven children exact dates are no longer so important to you.  Certainly there have been a lot of folks in past generations that knew only an estimation of their age, but we can still rely on those people who were closest to them to record the best information possible on the stone that will memorialize their friend or family member.

Understanding that these memorial gardens can be both comforting and informative, perhaps you can understand my sadness when I find a ‘lost’ cemetery.  You’ve seen them too, two or three stones posted along the side of a roadway or fenced out of the midst of a field.  It was a special place to some family who chose to bury there and now you wonder if anyone even knows where the graves are.  I wonder whether the family ever comes to decorate or check on the condition of these graves.  I wonder whether the names are logged in someone’s genealogy or would these graves fill a missing link for someone.   My family has a lost cemetery we still haven’t found.  My great-great-great grandmother died many, many years before her husband and while her children were tiny.  We assume she is buried with either no stone or an un-inscribed stone and we believe the grave to have been part of a small cemetery at the time.  Today, woods surround that area and there is not maintained cemetery.  Hunters and hikers frequently happen upon such places.  I remember being on a wilderness trip in Florida and finding an old cemetery.  It was such a sad place for there was no roadway leading to it and I couldn’t help but feel no one had been there in a very long time.  These graves represented someone’s family.  Even in established cemeteries, there are often numerous graves that have no name attached to them.  I would love to know why some of these old graves were left with only rough stones and no name.  One of my great-great grandmothers had lost several babies and while she was recuperating, the men of the family buried each one in turn with no stone at all.  Years later she would say, “Only God knows where my babies are buried.”

Searching for stones and information from them is not always so dreadful.  Some of our old cemeteries have now been mapped, listing all of the stones with all of the information they contain.  With this sort of resource, we can do lots of research in a library or even from your own home if the listing is published on the internet.  That is a convenience I will take advantage of anytime I can.  Yet there is something inspiring about walking among the stones memorializing people I’ve been working hard to research.  I can see their names and immediately I’m reminded of stories about them.  And when I see the neighboring stones, carrying the same family name, more questions always arise – and the research-adventure continues.

The Pot of Gold

Gold – it has the power to thrill or to kill.  Men have lost families, lives and all trace of common sense in the pursuit of this shiny rock.  Where is its value?  If you can’t eat, wear, or otherwise practically use something, value is assigned solely by trading worth.  After all, outside of our economy, those rectangular, green papers we carry around are useless. 

 I mentioned previously that The Cherokee traditionally placed no value on gold.  Despite having an incredibly rich supply of gold right in the middle of their Georgia hunting lands, they never mined it until the white man came and they saw the value he placed on the gold.  So the search for gold breeds many legends and today we explore another one.

This legend leads us to a beautiful and intriguing geological formation.  A natural bridge formed out of rock is always fascinating and it would seem people have been fascinated by this geological phenomenon for generations.  For it is under just such a structure that we find the key to today’s gold legend.  I’m including a picture looking up at this massive piece of rock with bright sunshine cascading down both sides. 

Today, this bridge is far from well-traveled roads, but it must have been on a native thoroughfare for underneath we find two Indian paintings.  The legend says it is a fox and he’s facing a pot of gold.  This was meant to be a marker that the fox is facing a gold mine. 

How does one authenticate Indian paintings?  Well, I suppose there are scientific methods, none of which have been applied to our painting, as far as I know.  However, the painting has always been there – back to the early part of the 20th century at least.  Don’t you just wish someone had written about it in the 19th century or before?

Local historian Luther Atkinson told that an aged Cherokee once came through the plateau and was asked about the painting and its legend.  He examined the painting and confirmed it was from his people, but instead of announcing riches for the taking, it warned of hunger.  What we’ve called a pot of gold, he said was an empty basket.  The painting was announcing this was a poor hunting-ground, there was no game to be had.  That’s the closest thing to expert analysis we’ve got but it hasn’t affected the legend at all.  I guess we’d rather hope for gold than mourn the missing wildlife!

As I stand awed by this incredible formation, I can’t help but wonder what my Cherokee ancestors would have thought.  Did they routinely pass by here?  Could this have been an overnight stopping point for them?  Can you see a young hunting party gliding silently over a leaf-strewn path that might be invisible to the untrained eye?  They stop under the cool shade of the bridge and listen for the movement of deer.  Then they see the sign left by earlier hunters, Don’t waste your time here, this is not a good hunting spot.  Move on.  A young man adjusts his quiver on his back, another shifts his bow to his left hand.  Cupped hands catch the sweet, cold water as it drips from the edge of the rock.  The leader looks to the sun; it is slipping westward and bathing the solid rock wall in warm light.  He decides they must press on; there’s no reason to camp where their brothers have already determined the land won’t supply the meat they are seeking.  The party slips on to the southwest, leaving little evidence of their passing.

Confederate Gold

The Horse Pounds are a lush, green, rugged mountainside.  My Grandpa would have said their purpose is to hold the world together, as he always said of property seeming unfit for man or beast.  This ridge line between The Baldwin Gulf and Wilder is hard to get to, difficult to navigate through and relatively untouched by human hand.  While there were a few small farms located on the top of the mountain, there are no real roads there, not even regular paths.  It’s the perfect place to hide something you don’t want anyone to find.

Legend has it that this rugged land was just where a Confederate detachment hid the payroll they were tasked with delivering.  Pressed by Union soldiers, we are to understand that the Rebs sought a safe place for the gold – and the legend does believe it to be gold.  They buried their goods and turned to face the enemy.  Unfortunately, as was happening throughout The South, the detachment was wiped out and never returned to retrieve the gold.  And there it’s been ever since.

Legends don’t often come with a lot of detail and this one is no different.  We don’t know what year these events took place.  That seems particularly relevant in considering Civil War legends (at least those involving gold) since the short life of the Confederate States of America and their limited gold resources would seriously confine the time period for gold movement.  Moreover, gold was needed for international purchases and would not have been used for troop payroll beyond the earliest months of the war.

It’s a bittersweet legend.  While it’s fascinating to think of buried treasure right here among the rolling mountains at the northeast edge of the Cumberland Plateau, I can’t help but apply historical precedent to this legend.

We seem to have a few legends floating around that incorporate Civil War soldiers into them.  And, there was a Confederate training ground in Livingston – 36 miles of very hard walking  from The Horse Pounds.  Of course there were no major battles in our area – you have to go to Chattanooga, Nashville or Knoxville to find a battle that even gets historical notice.  Of course, we had guerillas and mercenaries in operation (Tinker Dave Beaty was one of the war’s most infamous guerillas and he hails from Fentress County) so there were skirmishes among these bands.  But by and large, we were very much a border-land and a remote one at that.

I guess it would be at least possible that a detachment of soldier’s clandestine movements could have brought them out to our mountain.  At least the legend lives on after one hundred fifty years.  Of course, it isn’t so much ‘alive’ that we’ve all gone out and dug up the horse pounds. 

I have one more gold legend which I’ll discuss next week.  Do you know of one? 

Is there Gold on That Mountain?

M.F. Stephenson’s famous words, “There’s gold in them thar’ hills” are well known, although most people think he referred to California hills when in fact he was pointing to Georgia’s Appalachian foothills.  By the time James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill (in Coloma, California) in 1848, the eastern gold fields were already in full production. 

Charlotte, NC saw the first U.S. gold strike in 1799 when a boy found a seventeen pound nugget in a creek on his father’s farm.  Less than fifty years later, gold was found near Dahlonega, Georgia.  The first gold-rush town was established in Nuckollsville, Georgia about six miles from present day Dahlonega.

Legislation passed in 1835 established U.S. Mints in both Charlotte and Dahlonega.  The Dahlonega mint actually processed quite a lot of California gold until the San Francisco mint was opened in 1854.]

Gold Seam

The wealth found in Georgia was a contributing factor to the Cherokee removal of 1838.  Unlike some of the native peoples in South America, the Southeastern-native Cherokee nation did not mine gold traditionally.  However, as the white man began to influence their society, Cherokees learned the value of this precious metal and began to work their Georgia homeland until the time of their removal.

Why all this talk about gold?  No, I haven’t made a strike on the Cumberland Plateau – don’t we all just wish?  But I do know of a legend or two…

You see, gold can be found in a couple of different forms.  There’s the naturally occurring seams of gold that must be mined and refined; then there’s gold coins or jewelry that’s been lost or left.

The first legend speaks of the mining kind of gold.

Sometime around 1909, Tom and Rhoda Norris bought a tract of land in Martha Washington.  Rhoda, born Rhoda England, had a brother named Luke England (known as ‘Uncle Luke’ all around) who was living in Muddy Pond.  While the two communities don’t seem especially close if you’re traveling by foot today, if you go the nigh way, it’s really not too far.  In fact, there is a possibility that the two farms joined on the northwest side of the Norris land. 

At this time, Luke would have been in his mid-fifties, not a young man in that day when the life expectancy was forty-nine.  But he still had small children at home that necessitated him hunting regularly to keep meat on the table.  And it was just such a hunting trip that took him across Hurricane Creek and onto his brother-in-laws farm. 

Now property lines were viewed a little differently in those days of no fence laws, roaming cattle and prolific hunters.  Tom would not have considered Luke poaching even if he hadn’t been kinfolk.  But allowing a man to kill game on your land doesn’t mean all the resources are there for the taking.  Can you imagine the surprise and excitement when a hunting trip seeking deer, or rabbit, or squirrel – really anything edible that you could drag home – produced instead a gold mine?  And that’s just what Luke reported finding!  

Of course, Luke went directly to his Tom and reported the find, but not the details of the location; he knew he had to make a deal before he told everything that he knew.  On the walk up to Tom and Rhoda’s house, Luke had quickly planned the necessary mining operation and he assumed he and Tom would split all their profits fifty-fifty.  Tom disagreed.

Tom was never known for being overly-generous and refused Luke’s offer.  He wanted two-thirds of all profits.  Luke refused.

Luke declared if Tom wouldn’t give up half then he wouldn’t get anything.  He walked away never divulging to Tom the location of the riches.  However, Tom and Rhoda raised twelve children and Luke talked to each of them in turn.  Each of them, mostly grown by this time, was told a slightly different story about what he saw and where he saw it; and each child at one time or another attempted to follow the clue their old uncle had given them, to no avail.

As this story was passed from one generation to another, the little details that Luke disclosed began to be compared.  It seems that he told everyone a slightly different story and we now theorize that had all of the Norris children gotten together with their stories, the gold would have been pinpointed.  Unfortunately, they searched independently and no one was successful.

The really good news in this story is that Luke and Tom seemed to have remained friends with no hard feelings about the failed deal.  Certainly the England and Norris families remained on good terms. 

Many years later, two of Tom’s grandchildren did locate a small seam of Pyrite, commonly known as Fool’s Gold.  They had is assayed and found it to be worth something like twenty dollars per ton.  It was never mined.

Next week we’ll talk about mountain legend of the other kind of gold – coins.

In the meantime, do you have a gold legend from the plateau?  I’d love to hear it.