Southern Graves

Along the arc of his long life, the personal details of Allen Ramsey Davis (1836-1921) paint a picture of a 19th-century Crawford County, Georgia native who transitioned from a young agricultural overseer to a ranked Civil War soldier, and ultimately to a prominent landholder. Early Life and Roots Allen was born 23 August 1836 to Solomon W. "Sol" Davis (d. 1868) and Aletha "Letha" Barnes (d. 1902). Around 1860, Allen married Georgia Ann Vinson (1843-1924). She was a daughter of Benjamin Vinson (d. 1882) and Mary Renfroe (d. 1877). Since Allen came from a family of ten children, and Georgia a family of nine, the Davis-Vinson union joined two large, prominent local families. In June 1860, the census taker found the A. R. Davis household in the southeastern part of Crawford County, not far from the Houston County line and the 4-year-old railroad hub of Fort Valley. The young newlywed was occupied as an overseer of someone else's property, with no real estate of his...

James Exom Taylor was born on 9 May 1837 in Pulaksi County, Georgia, the son of Charles Edward Taylor (1810-1886) and Charlotte Exum Phillips (1814-1877). Aside from the ten years he was married to Anna Bell Jordan (d. 1882), James lived the bachelor life, usually occupied with farming pursuits. James maintained a close friendship with members of the George Walker family, whose sons settled the Longstreet community where James was born. Upon James's death in 1913, Dr. T. D. Walker wrote the tribute to his friend transcribed below, and James was laid to rest by his late wife in the Walker Cemetery at Bleckley County, Georgia. Bleckley was carved from Pulaski the year before James's death. In the dim unknown standeth God, within the shadow, keeping watch above His own. Note:  This tribute is a classic example of early 20th-century memorial writing. During this era, particularly in the South, it was customary for friends or family to write highly sentimentalized tributes for newsp...

Homicide at Cochran, Georgia! William Thomas McVay was born on 24 August 1835. He married Martha Ella Linder in Laurens County, Georgia, on 4 November 1858. In 1862, W. T. enlisted in the Confederate Army as a private. He was promoted through the ranks, culminating in the position of 1st Lieutenant of Company F, 14th Georgia Infantry. During the decade of Reconstruction, William transitioned from a Confederate officer to a prominent merchant in the newly established community of Cochran, Georgia. Officially incorporated in 1869, the town was built around a stop on the Macon and Brunswick Railroad. Merchants like McVay were crucial to the town's early economy, linking local cotton and agricultural products to the wider regional markets. Being a successful merchant in a small, post-war Southern town (not to mention his veteran status) likely meant William was an individual of considerable influence and standing in the local community and surrounding counties. A snippet from an articl...

And that's all I know about him. As claimed in the previous post , Thomas Herald was the father of Sam Herald, who was the husband of Rachel Etta Talley Herald (d. 1913). Both Thomas and Etta rest in Maddux Cemetery in Harrison, Hamilton County, Tennessee. To be fully transparent, I will tell you all the evidence I currently have for Thomas being the father of Sam (and father-in-law of Etta) is circumstantial. It's not a theory I'm super queasy about, though, so I'll go with it unless proven otherwise. As communicated in the image of Thomas's headstone, he served in Company C of the 5th Tennessee Mounted Infantry. (Better image by Cynthia Henry here .) The recessed shield and American flag decoration could lead one to believe he served with the Union Army during the Civil War. It's also helpful to know that Tennessee, especially its eastern part, had a large population of Southern Unionists . That belief is proven to be so with Thomas's Civil War service rec...

Rachel Etta Talley was born on 10 August 1876 in Tennessee (possibly Meigs County) to Mary Jane Salomon / Salmon (d. 1884) and Dudley H. Talley (1834-1933). On 16 November 1902, Etta married Samuel "Sam" Herald in Hamilton County, Tennessee. The couple had at least two children: Bertie May and Thomas. According to Chattanooga, Tennessee city death records, Etta died of pneumonia on 27 November 1913. Burial was at Maddux Cemetery in Harrison, Hamilton County, Tennessee, although it was incorrectly listed as McCullough Cemetery in an obituary that ran in the Chattanooga Daily Times: " Mrs. Eta Herald. Mrs. Eta Herald, aged 37 years, died at her residence, 1125 Dodson avenue, East Chattanooga, at 2 p.m. yesterday. She is survived by her husband, Sam Herald, and two children. Funeral services will be held from the residence at 2 o'clock this afternoon. The body will be taken to Harrison early Saturday morning for interment in McCullough cemetery near there." Etta wa...

The following was published in the  Columbus Sunday Enquirer  (Georgia) on 11 July 1875, one day after the death of Gen. Henry Lewis Benning, namesake of Fort Benning ( now known as Fort Moore ). GENERAL HENRY L. BENNING. HE DIES AT 3 A.M. YESTERDAY -- JURIST, SOLDIER, GENTLEMAN -- BRIEF SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. After our paragraph of yesterday morning it was a matter of no surprise for our people to hear that Gen. Benning was dead. He breathed his last about three o'clock Saturday morning. The day before he had been on the streets, but he never rallied from the fai[n]ting fit in F. L. Brook's drug-store. He was not even conscious after 4 P.M. Friday. Drs. Colzey and Stanford were with him constantly. The cause seemed to be a sudden giving away of the entire system. Several days before he seemed to be improving rapidly. The General was a tall, powerful man, with white beard and hair, and a true Southerner, every inch of him. Old Billie, the colored man who was in headquarter mess...

His parents were Dr. Robert Maxwell and Elizabeth Caroline (Jones) Young. New York Tribune  (New York) Tuesday, 7 July 1896 OBITUARY. GENERAL PIERCE M. B. YOUNG. General Pierce M. B. Young, United States Minister to Guatemala and Honduras, died suddenly at the Presbyterian Hospital, at Park-ave. and Seventieth-st., about noon yesterday, after a long illness. General Young had for several years suffered from an ailment of the heart. He secured a leave of absence from his post on account of this illness, which had developed into dropsy. He left Guatemala on June 6, and reached New-York on June 27. He spent that night at the Marlborough Hotel, and then was taken to the hospital where he died. Although he had been ill for so long a time, his death was sudden. About an hour before he died he was sitting up in bed laughing and joking with his brother-in-law, Dr. Thomas Jones. He persuaded the latter to go to Dr. Janeway, his physician, to obtain his consent to the removal of General Youn...

Henry Greene Cole (1815-1875) provided the land for the Marietta National Cemetery in Cobb County, Georgia. Per the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs -  Henry Cole, a local merchant who remained loyal to the Union throughout the war, offered land for a burial ground for both Union and Confederate dead. His hope was that by honoring those who had fallen together, others might learn to live in peace. Unfortunately, both sides clung to their bitterness and neither North nor South would accept Cole's offer toward reconciliation. When this effort failed, 24 acres were offered to General George H. Thomas for use of a national cemetery. In 1867 a second offer of land by Cole was accepted and a subsequent purchase of additional acreage in 1870 brought the cemetery to its present size of a little over 23 acres. A stipulation of the land transfer was the Cole family would retain a burial plot on the property. Marietta Journal  (Georgia) Friday 23 April 1875 Death of Henry G. Cole. Mr...

Fletcher Family (L-R) Daughter Louise, Father Dix, & Mother Louisa Two corpses in one house. Marietta Journal  (Georgia) Thursday, 15 July 1886 FATHER AND DAUGHTER DEAD. It has seldom occurred in the history of any one family in Marietta when there were two corpses in one house, but such was the case Tuesday night and yesterday, -- an aged father and invalid daughter reposed in the cold embrace of death at the residence of Mrs. H. G. Cole, daughter of the former and sister of the latter. Miss Louise E. Fletcher died about seven o'clock Monday night and Mr. Dix Fletcher died at ten o'clock Tuesday night. Both had been on beds of affliction for a long time; sufferers in the flesh, their released spirits soon joined each other on the other shore, rejoicing in deliverance from the shackles of clay and triumph over the grave. Their Christian lives bright in good deeds and loyal devotion to God dispel all doubt as to their being numbered with the redeemed of the 'crucified On...

He was in Virginia when Lee surrendered... Atlanta Constitution  (Georgia) Tuesday, 8 June 1926 J. B. GLOVER, VETERAN, PASSES AT MARIETTA Marietta, Ga., June 7. -- (Special.) James Bolan Glover, 85, Confederate veteran and pioneer citizen of Marietta, died at his residence on Whitlock avenue Monday morning at 11 o'clock following a short illness. Born in Walterboro, S.C., August 14, 1841, son of John Heyward Glover and Jane Bolan , he moved to Marietta when a boy and worked with his father at the tannery business for several years preceding the civil war. When his native state, South Carolina, seceded from the union he immediately joined the colors and enlisted in the Palmetto Guards of Charleston, S.C. He was the first man to leave Cobb county for the war, and the last surviving member of that company, which was commanded by Colonel Renshaw. He was afterwards transferred to General J. G. Walker's staff and later to the seventh Georgia cavalry, which was composed almost entirel...

Edward Thombley was born 22 November 1837 in Dale County, Alabama to Thomas Thombley and Sarah Cross. On 4 June 1861, Edward enlisted in Company I of the 2nd Florida Infantry (CSA). He participated in the Battle of Gettysburg, was wounded in the right arm, and taken as prisoner on 3 July 1863. He was released from Fort Delaware after signing an Oath of Allegiance in June 1865. After the war, on 10 January 1867 at Dooly County, Georgia, Edward married Martha Calhoun. She died on 24 November 1900. A tribute to the memory of Mrs. Thombley was published in the 20 December 1900 Vienna Progress  (Georgia) - In Memory of Mrs. Thombley. On the 24th of November death visited our midst and took from us our dear aged grandmother, Mrs. E. H. Thombley. She was sick only a few hours when God called her to join his happy band. Although being sixty-eight years of age, she leaves a husband, brother, four children, a host of grandchildren and friends to mourn her loss. She had been a consistent memb...