Barnesville Blues
First Sergeant
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2013
- Location
- The Emerald Isle
Apologizes to all if I have posted something similar before...I don't think I have.... I also apologize if I have placed this in the wrong forum as I wasn't sure where to put it.
First some background on what exactly we are looking at here. This is my families old burial ground. It was lost for generations but was rediscovered back in the 1970's. A distant cousin of mine was led to the site of the cemetery by an old timer who has since passed. This cousin has shown others and eventually I was taken to the spot as well. A couple of years ago, another cousin and myself took it upon or selves to try to preserve the old family burial ground. Today the cemetery lies in a grove of trees that sites smack in the middle of a cow pasture. The grove of trees served as a source of shade for the cows which over time caused even more damage to the cemetery. My cousin and myself had a fence installed around the cemetery. There is only one grave that has markings, the grave of a young boy who would have been the Grand nephew of my Confederate Ancestor...the boys grandfather died a POW during the civil war and I have a couple of letters he wrote home from the war. It is possible that his grandfather is buried in this cemetery as he appears to have been in the process of being transported for exchange when he died. There are posibily two other Confederate Soldiers buried here as well, one was in the 53rd Georgia Infantry but all the graves but one have no markings, are just marked with simple stones or even just footer stones. My 4rth Great Grandparents are buried in two of the graves, they sent five sons off to war for the Confederacy, only two were alive when the war ended.
Anyway when I first arrived at the cemetery one very odd thing seems to stick out. There is a huge slab of granite that is well...out of place. It sites almost directly on top of the only grave with markings but slightly to one side. It is extremely heavily and it is hard to imagine it being moved far from where it was originally placed. The land owner who currently owns the property said that he became extremely interested in the cemetery as soon as he discovered it, said he originally thought it was an old slave cemetery because the marked stone was buried by leaves at the time so he didn't think any of the graves were marked. He said that when he first discovered the slab of granite that he figured it must have a carving of some kind on the underside. He hooked the slab to his tractor with a chain and with the help of others, pried it up to view the underside....nothing, no carvings of any kind. He said that since he had it standing, he left it upright and packed dirt around the base....it has since fallen which brings it to it's current state. The slab is not smooth like you typically see with slabs that go over the actual "hole" and it is very thick to be one of those. The only grave markings, after examining it, doesn't appear to have had one of these slabs as there are rocks arranged in a circle at the base of the head stone and then filled in with other stones to serve the same purpose as the slab would have. Someone suggested it might be a bench...but no legs or any other pieces have ever been found. I had the Georgia Historical Preservation Division send down two archaeologists who probed and found additional graves that we were unaware of and who are not marked with anything about 15 burials total.
Even these Archealogists were at a loss as to what the original purpose of this huge slab of granite would have been. It has to have cost a pretty penny back then. The archaeologists did point though that again the slab doesn't appear to go with the grave that it was closest too...as the only stone with Markings was made of Marble, not granite and the archaeologists also said it looks like Italian Marble, not the local Georgia Marble so it would not have been a cheap monument when it was new.
At lot has changed from the time this picture was taken, there is now a fence around the cemetery and the broken, marked stone in the picture has been repaired and is now back upright. Any thoughts on this slab of granite and what it was originally for? I would appreciate hearing your thoughts, especially from people like Mr. Wynn who works at a historical cemetery.
First some background on what exactly we are looking at here. This is my families old burial ground. It was lost for generations but was rediscovered back in the 1970's. A distant cousin of mine was led to the site of the cemetery by an old timer who has since passed. This cousin has shown others and eventually I was taken to the spot as well. A couple of years ago, another cousin and myself took it upon or selves to try to preserve the old family burial ground. Today the cemetery lies in a grove of trees that sites smack in the middle of a cow pasture. The grove of trees served as a source of shade for the cows which over time caused even more damage to the cemetery. My cousin and myself had a fence installed around the cemetery. There is only one grave that has markings, the grave of a young boy who would have been the Grand nephew of my Confederate Ancestor...the boys grandfather died a POW during the civil war and I have a couple of letters he wrote home from the war. It is possible that his grandfather is buried in this cemetery as he appears to have been in the process of being transported for exchange when he died. There are posibily two other Confederate Soldiers buried here as well, one was in the 53rd Georgia Infantry but all the graves but one have no markings, are just marked with simple stones or even just footer stones. My 4rth Great Grandparents are buried in two of the graves, they sent five sons off to war for the Confederacy, only two were alive when the war ended.
Anyway when I first arrived at the cemetery one very odd thing seems to stick out. There is a huge slab of granite that is well...out of place. It sites almost directly on top of the only grave with markings but slightly to one side. It is extremely heavily and it is hard to imagine it being moved far from where it was originally placed. The land owner who currently owns the property said that he became extremely interested in the cemetery as soon as he discovered it, said he originally thought it was an old slave cemetery because the marked stone was buried by leaves at the time so he didn't think any of the graves were marked. He said that when he first discovered the slab of granite that he figured it must have a carving of some kind on the underside. He hooked the slab to his tractor with a chain and with the help of others, pried it up to view the underside....nothing, no carvings of any kind. He said that since he had it standing, he left it upright and packed dirt around the base....it has since fallen which brings it to it's current state. The slab is not smooth like you typically see with slabs that go over the actual "hole" and it is very thick to be one of those. The only grave markings, after examining it, doesn't appear to have had one of these slabs as there are rocks arranged in a circle at the base of the head stone and then filled in with other stones to serve the same purpose as the slab would have. Someone suggested it might be a bench...but no legs or any other pieces have ever been found. I had the Georgia Historical Preservation Division send down two archaeologists who probed and found additional graves that we were unaware of and who are not marked with anything about 15 burials total.
Even these Archealogists were at a loss as to what the original purpose of this huge slab of granite would have been. It has to have cost a pretty penny back then. The archaeologists did point though that again the slab doesn't appear to go with the grave that it was closest too...as the only stone with Markings was made of Marble, not granite and the archaeologists also said it looks like Italian Marble, not the local Georgia Marble so it would not have been a cheap monument when it was new.
At lot has changed from the time this picture was taken, there is now a fence around the cemetery and the broken, marked stone in the picture has been repaired and is now back upright. Any thoughts on this slab of granite and what it was originally for? I would appreciate hearing your thoughts, especially from people like Mr. Wynn who works at a historical cemetery.
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