Country Roads

Over the weekend my husband and I walked up a country road.


Up and up . . .

and up. . .


and finally down. . .


to a place nestled underneath the tall shade trees.



A peaceful and secluded place that was selected long, long ago to be the resting place of my ancestors. All in a row are my grandparents James and Lucy McMillion and four of their children.


My gr grandparents Elijah and Emily McMillion are also laid to rest up on top of this hill. A broken pine tree limb hangs close to the ground over their graves.


Another uncle and cousins are also there on top of the hill.

Many, many more of my ancestors are there. But, the only signs of their presence are sunken places and old rocks at the head and foot of their graves.

I wish they had left their names on those rocks. Now I can only guess and wonder who they were, while I walk on the ground where my ancestors once stood and said their good-byes to their family and loved ones.

When I'm up there, I don't want to leave. I want to linger and reminisce.

I remember the times I climbed that hill when I was a child. There was no road then and we climbed up a winding path through the woods. Grandma would put together bunches of live flowers cut from the bushes in her yard and we climbed to the old family cemetery and placed them on the graves.

Decoration Day Visits

My husband is working this weekend and next, so two of my sons and I visited a couple of cemeteries today.

Our first visit was to our old family cemetery up Tupper's Creek. My son, Andrew, constructed this sign a few years ago. Gr Grandma Emily (Edens) McMillion and Gr Grandpa Elijah McMillion are buried here.



My grandparents, some of my aunts and uncles and a few cousins are also resting here. I visited this cemetery every year with Mom, Grandma and my aunts to decorate the graves when I was a kid. This is the place where every year I would get my first outbreak of poison ivy. The poison ivy is still there and so are many, many unmarked graves. I walked on the hillside to the right to see if I could find any more unmarked graves that I had not found before.

Here is a rock which looks to be a headstone surrounded with this ground cover which covers every inch of the un-mowed area. I heard that in the old days they would plant ground cover at cemeteries so weed control would be easier. Have any of you heard of this? Do you know what this ground cover is called?


Here is a close up picture. . .


Many graves are down this row, marked only by stones and sunken areas in the ground. Off to the right - - in the weeds, poison ivy, trees and ground cover, I believe there to be more graves.


This plant is growing to the right, they look like some sort of daffodils gone wild that was planted years ago. I need to go up there in early spring, so I can see what they look like then.



There used to be a dirt path going straight through the upper section of the cemetery where four wheelers drove. I'm thinking these rocks were removed from graves and piled at the base of this poison ivy covered tree. It's a shame that some people don't have more respect for cemeteries.




Here is a stone wedged between the limbs of this tree.


Here is a picture taken from the lower end of the grave sites. This is where we entered the cemetery when I was a child. There was no road and we climbed straight up the hill from below.



Before leaving, I had David take a picture of me, my cousin Vera of Intouchwith, and my sister Shirley of Mama's Place standing in front of our grandmother's grave.



Here is the view driving back down the old winding road leaving the cemetery.



We followed my cousin, Vera, up Buzzard Rock to her family cemetery. Here is a picture I snapped out the back of our truck of the rock for which the road was named after. It is much smaller now, it used to jut out over the road much more and was cave like underneath.


We passed by this wonderful old log cabin. There used to be an old country store beside of it. I mention this store in my historical fiction book Lucy of Tupper's Hollow. You all need to ask my cousin Vera to post about the old log house. I would just love to have this on my land. I would fill it up with all my old vintage thingies and sit and reminisce about the old days of my ancestors.




And here we are following my cousin, Vera, on the road leading to the other cemetery.



My son and another man spent a long time with pencil and paper rubbing an old headstone. It was of an infant girl named Henrietta who died Dec 3, 1878 aged 11 mo 21 days. It said at the bottom. . .

budded on earth to
bloom in heaven

I had never heard of that saying before, I thought it was so sweet and sad.

We still have other cemeteries to visit. But today we had an enjoyable time visiting two of them and remembering gone, but not forgotten, family members.