James Cemetary

I came across this accidentally. I've been spending the past few weeks trying to bicycle off all the fat rolls and sweat out all the booze down in the river bottoms. Usually all there is to see there is a bunch of corn fields and a few river homes which provide excellent entertainment on the weekends. However, I decided not to be so lazy one day and rode a few miles farther out and ran into this. And I know "cemetery" isn't spelled with an "a", but that's how they spell things down here. Don't believe me, look at the pic.

Here is the entrance sign.

This cemetery most likely holds the remains of farmers who used to farm the land years ago. Every intelligible marker displayed deaths between 1846 and 1939. However, most of the deaths occurred in the 1880's. For the most part this cemetery seems to be nothing more than a semi-forgotten resting place. However, some of these people who were the last ones to be buried here in 1939 seem to have visitors. Must be old children or grandchildren.

The most interesting part about this resting place is the very disturbing life spans of most of it's patrons. I'm going to show most of markers so you can see for yourself, but most of the people who are laid to rest here died between the ages of 4-23. It makes me wonder if this place is haunted. I would guess it is, but it also has a house right next to it, so who knows.

I'll start off with the ones fortunate to make it over 25 years of age.

I couldn't read it. Looks like the top was sliced. A nice marker.
This was the only family area. Aiken....I only wish the first name on it was Clay. I think this was the oldest person here.
Backside of the Aiken clan.

Here were some interesting ones.

A whole row of unreadable ones. This could be a coincidence but it is somewhat interesting that the only depressed spot in the whole area is right where a grave is.

Ok, here are the tragic, before their times graves.

4 years.... 22 years. 21
17 years. Buried next to someone who died at 28, but not sure if there's any relation. 9 years old. In case you can't read it, "A little flower of love blossomed but to die." There is another tombstone underneath it saying a person died at 15. 23 years. This was the oldest readable maker I found. Put into place in 1847.

Here are some of the others.

I really hope they weren't buried like this. I mean, I'm not much into graveyard humor, but talk about a threesome. It would be someone ironic of this person died form decapitation now wouldn't it. This one was hid in trees. No idea how it got there. Maybe it's just that old that trees grew around it.
You really can't read this, but it is a nice view of the rest of the graveyard. No telling how old this is, but that isn't the original maker suggesting it's probably pretty up there in years. Looks like somebody new this person.

An interesting thing about this area is that it not only has a graveyard for people, but also one for obsolete farm equipment. There must have been at least 40 old horse drawn type plows and a dozen early tractors. I couldn't resist.

A picture of the whole lot. A nice rusty plow. Same one, different angle.
Another one.

I would have liked to get more shots of the equipment graveyard, but my batteries died. Not a bad find. I would like to know more about this places. More specifically, why so many people here died so young. Perhaps it was smallpox or another infectious disease.


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