Southern Graves

1897 in Ripley County, Indiana saw a community fed up.  It seems there was a gang going 'round committing acts of marauding and thievery.  And this had been going on, day and night, for years.  It ended, for at least some gang members, September 15th. Headlines were ablaze in newspapers across the country: Judge Lynch Settles Five: Mob at Versailles, Ind., Deal Out Justice to Robbers.   [Duluth, MN] Outraged Citizens Take Quick Vengeance: Five Men Strung Up by the Neck at Versailles, Indiana.   [Wheeling, WV] Indiana Robbers Lynched.  Five Disposed of at Versailles at Once.  [Emporia, KS] Five Men Lynched Because They Stole: Mob at Versailles, Ind, Strings Up a Quintette of Burglars.  [Boise, ID] And here's the story as told by Georgia's Vienna Progress (23 September 1897): INDIANIANS LYNCH ROBBERS MOB OVERPOWERS JAILER AND SWING UP SIX MEN. DEPREDATIONS INCENSED PEOPLE. Taken By Force From the Authorities and Death Meted Out To Them By the "Hemp...

Sacred to the memory of COLONEL AMBROSE GORDON who in the various relations of life discharged his duties with fidelity and diligence he was born in the State of New-Jersey on the 28th June 1751 and departed this life on the 28th June 1804 aged 53 St. Paul's Church Cemetery Augusta, Georgia Col. Ambrose Gordon was the father of Georgia railway pioneer William Washington Gordon .

[Originally posted at the Your Peachy Past blog . Cross-posted here for my fellow cemetery wanderers!] Standing in Savannah's Wright Square (also known as Court House Square) is an impressive monument to a Georgia railway pioneer, William Washington Gordon. Here's what Lucian Lamar Knight has to say about the man and the monument: "One of the most beautiful monuments in the city of Savannah is the handsome structure of marble, in Court House square, commemorating the useful life of the great pioneer of railway development in Georgia: William Washington Gordon. He died at the early age of forty-six. But he gave the most lasting impetus to the material upbuilding of his native State and accomplished a work of constructive value which was destined to live after him. As the first president of Georgia's earliest railway enterprise, his genius was initiative. He was not only a pathfinder but a builder of splendid highways. Much of the subsequent history of railr...