K. Carmichael

Category: cemetery project

  • Ebenezer Christian Church

    Ebenezer Christian Church

    Surrounded by cornfields, this simple country church seems lovely and peaceful. According to Find a Grave, the cemetery associated with this church has 572 memorials. The earliest seem to date from the mid-19th century (the Kerns family). Other early burials in the cemetery include Fletcher, Whitacre, Oates, and Mauzy family members.

    Whitacre Marker, Ebenezer Church Cemetery

    According to Carr and Carr (1988),1Carr, Clay B., & Carr, Mildred I. (1988). Historical Sketches of Places of Worship—Winchester and Frederick County Virginia. Winchester Printers, Inc. the church (as a worship body) was organized with the help of noted itinerant evangelist Lorenzo Dow “before the 1840s” (as Dow died in 1834, presumably before then). The Frederick County 250th Anniversary Commission has its founding date as 1832. Lorenzo Dow was an eccentric preacher who traveled and proselytized in England, Ireland, Canada, and the United States (particularly in the South). Dow was an opponent of slavery, going against many major denominations of the time such as the Methodist Episcopal Church.2Brawley, B. G. (1916). Lorenzo Dow. Journal of Negro History, 1(3), 265–275. As Dow wrote in 1840:3Dow, L. (1812). A Journey from Babylon to Jerusalem: Or The Road to Peace and True Happiness: Prefaced with An Essay on the Rights of Man. Haas & Lamb. p.71

    As all men are created equal and independant by the God of Nature; slavery must have Moral Evil for its foundation, seeing it violates the Law of Nature, as established by its Author.

    Unfortunately, probably few of the original (and later) church members shared Dow’s abolitionist feelings, although more research may turn up new information. Lorenzo Dow and Elder Christy Sine (1789 – 1858) organized the church body that would become Ebenezer Church, and the first building was “brought over the frozen drifts 10 feet deep during the severe winter of 1840 by a team of eight horses several miles from the farm of Ezra Miller.” 4Carr and Carr, 1988, p. 16 The Reverend Sine was also an unconventional religious man; before marriage, he was an itinerant preacher like Dow, and after settling down, fathered 17 children with three wives.5The Rev. Christy Sine. (1996). Hampshire County Historical Society, Fourth Quarter, 1–2.

    Ebenezer Church Cemetery

    Land for Ebenezer Church was donated by George Whitacre and his son donated land for the current building, which dates to 1876. The Whitacre and Anderson families donated additional land for the church and cemetery over the years.6Carr & Carr, 1988

    An 1890 photograph in the Stewart Bell Jr. Archives at the Handley Library shows about 40 parishioners (men, women, and a lot of children) outside of the church. Little of the church is visible in this photo, aside from wood siding and shuttered windows.7https://handley.pastperfectonline.com/photo/53A1EB5D-F63D-466A-AF7B-108099092384 The church and cemetery received a “generous endowment” from Charles Ray Oates’s estate in 1965, and the current facade and steeple of the church date to a 1969 renovation. 8Carr & Carr, 1988 The church belongs to the Disciples of Christ denomination.

  • Carson Family Cemetery

    I initially wanted to locate this family cemetery to fulfill some requests, I think. I can’t remember. There was limited information online about it, but I found that one of the most recent graves was that of a woman who had lived in a home on the land where the cemetery lies. Her obituary in 2001 said that she had been restoring the home to serve as a bed and breakfast. The B&B’s website was long gone, but through the power of the wayback machine, I found that it had operated from at least 2001 through about 2008. I had the address of the B&B and, one day with my husband and daughter, set out to see if I could find the cemetery.

    We were able to get pretty close to where I believed it was, but I didn’t see anything that looked like a cemetery–only fields. It was December, so there wasn’t much growing in the fields. We saw some guys working nearby on a tractor, and my husband–who is much more of a “people person” than I am–asked them if they knew where it was. They were super friendly and helpful, and pointed us to the middle of a field. It was pretty muddy, and cold, but we walked across the field and discovered the small graveyard.

    Carson Family Cemetery, near Stephens City, Frederick County, Virginia (2015)

    As family cemeteries go, it was actually fairly accessible and sort of maintained, in that some of the brush had been cut at one point not too long ago).

    Grave markers for some of the Carson family members. The arrangement doesn’t seem to be the original placement of the stones.

    I haven’t done any research about the Carson family, but apparently they were descended from the Hites, a fairly well-known and prominent Frederick County family.

    The site for the B&B, Pleasant Green Gardens (named after the home associated with the cemetery), states that “Simon Carson, Jr. married Martha Williams in the fall of 1791 and settled on a farm given to them by Elisha Williams. They named the farm ‘Pleasant Green.’ Their manor house, built in 1780, of gray stone still stands today.”

    There are grave markers in the cemetery for Simon Carson Jr., and his wife, Martha. There are markers for a few other members of the Carson family, and some markers with no inscriptions or illegible inscriptions. Simon Carson, Jr.’s son James Harvey was apparently a general in the Confederate Army, but I did not see a stone for him.

    Some of the illegible/unmarked stones. The wooden cross in the top right of the photo marks a recent pet burial.

    I hope that someday, some Carson descendants or others will clear out the brush and clean and repair the stones. There seems to be animal activity that has disturbed the ground, so some additional stones or pieces might be located.

  • The Cemetery Project

    I’ve been working on this project for about 8 years, in my available time. One of the “random acts of kindness”-type things I enjoy doing is going to cemeteries and fulfilling requests for pictures that have been submitted through Find a Grave. It melds a lot of my interests: photography, genealogy, and history, and it sometimes intersects my husband’s interests too (in that it involves driving around on back roads and finding forgotten places).

    I took this during one of my first trips to fulfill a local request. (This wasn’t the requested grave – I just liked it.)

    I guess my interest in cemeteries was sparked by my grandfather, who used to traipse around the backwoods of Alabama, locating old family graves, cleaning up forgotten gravesites, and spending time with distant cousins. Not that he took me with him–admittedly, the stories of snakes and other natural threats he encountered probably show that was the right decision to make. Still, I grew up hearing about his adventures, and the visits that we did make to our family members’ graves in manicured, safe, accessible sites sparked my love of cemeteries.

    From my grandparents’ photographs: the old family home in Hatchett Creek, Goodwater, Alabama (ca. 1958). My grandfather did a lot of work to restore the local cemetery and mark graves (sadly, I have no pictures of his work).

    After finding (or often, not finding) a grave of which someone has requested a photo, I upload the photo to the site and usually that’s it: the end of the story. I kept thinking I wanted to do something more, especially with some of these cemeteries that don’t have much information about them, or were hard to find, or seem to have disappeared or become inaccessible over time. I have a historic map of the area that shows hundreds of cemeteries that don’t have any information online about them, for example.

    I’ve already spent some quality time in the local archives, but I foresee a lot more. Also, the writing on this map is tiny and I need better reading glasses.

    My “lofty goal” is to visit and photograph every “historic” cemetery in my area (which includes Frederick County, and maybe parts of Clarke and Warren County, depending on how ambitious I want to get). I’d like to research these places, and maybe highlight some of the people who are interred there, if I can discover their stories. Even in my area of fairly slow development, historic cemeteries are disappearing or being forgotten, and I don’t want history to be lost.