Southern Graves

Five counties in northeast Georgia—Madison, Elbert, Oglethorpe, Oconee, and Clarke—were the entire world for three generations of the Eberhart family. Landscapes ranged from deep rural isolation to a bustling, rail-connected, manufacturing mecca. The more than three decades between the birth of John Eberhart, about 1841, and that of his son Stokely (Stokes) in 1878 were a whirlwind. The railroad arrived—bringing the outside world with it; the Civil War emancipated, devastated, and nearly starved; and Reconstruction came and went. Stokes probably thought the stories he heard about the gains African Americans made shortly after the Civil War were tall tales and not to be believed. Just months before he was born, Georgia adopted a new state constitution that instituted a poll tax used to disenfranchise Black voters. The lives of Stokes and his children, including a son named John Lee, were defined by a complex navigation of agrarian labor and the rigid, often violent, social codes of the ...

She was just four months shy of her eighteenth birthday. In continuing to research the names and dates on the gravestones of those buried in Maddux Cemetery at Tennessee's Harrison Bay State Park, I'm saddened by the number of lives cut short by Tuberculosis. "White plague," it was sometimes called, because its victims were garishly pale. I found it repeated on too many death certificates. I learned that in Tennessee, TB was the number one cause of death in 1923. The governor signed legislation in 1941 to create the first State Tuberculosis Hospital. By 1943, TB had only dropped to the number three cause of death in the state. A state-run tuberculosis hospital opened in Chattanooga, less than 20 miles south of Harrison Bay State Park, in 1951. And it wasn't until the early 1970s that state officials began to contemplate closing those hospitals. So I shouldn't be so surprised to find several cases in a cemetery of around 300 burials. I'm afraid I'll fin...

In 1940 and 1945, respectively. John Wesley McDaniel was born 16 July 1887 in Harrison, James (now Hamilton) County, Tennessee. He was one of ten children belonging to Sarah E. Capps (1864-1922) and George Oliver McDaniel (1862-1941). Two of his siblings were Jennie Green and Ott McDaniel . John married Addie Ollie Lowe (1887-1982), daughter of James S. Lowe, about 1910. This couple had at least two children: James Elder McDaniel and Mary Edith McDaniel. Twelve days before his 53rd birthday, John died. The cause of death was deemed to be Pulmonary Tuberculosis. John's death certificate doesn't explicitly state how long he suffered with the disease, but his attending physician cared for him for less than a week. Mary Edith McDaniel was born 20 September 1917 in Hamilton County, Tennessee. She, too, succumbed to Pulmonary Tuberculosis on 3 October 1945. Edith had just turned 28 less than two weeks prior. It appears her attending physician was the same as her father's, and Dr...

Jemima J. "Jennie" McDaniel Ensley Green was born 7 April 1885 in Tennessee to George Oliver (1862-1941) and Sarah E. Capps (1864-1922) McDaniel. Jennie married Rev. Messer Ensley (1852-1933) about 1914. He was more than thirty years her senior. Some time after the death of Messer, Jennie married a Mr. Green. Her death certificate, however, noted she was again a widow. Brother Ott McDaniel was the informant. Jennie's death was a result of injuries sustained when she was hit by a car in early November 1936. She suffered a broken leg and a crushed skull. (Death certificate via Ancestry .) Chattanooga Times  (Tennessee) Monday, 9 November 1936 - pg. 7 Georgia Woman Killed. Special to The Chattanooga Times. DALTON, Ga., Nov. 8. -- Mrs Jennie Green, 51, who was injured when struck by an automobile Friday on the Dixie highway near Westville, died yesterday afternoon at 4 o'clock in Hamilton Memorial hospital here. Mrs. Green is survived by her parents, Mr. and Mrs. G. O. M...

 More on the latter later. General Otis "Ott" McDaniel Maddux Cemetery Harrison, Hamilton County, Tennessee © 2025 S. Lincecum The blue-eyed and brown-haired Ott McDaniel was born 10 October 1899 in Harrison, James County, Tennessee. He was one of at least ten children born to Sarah E. Capps (d. 1922) and George Oliver McDaniel (1862-1941). On 24 May 1918, just south of the state line in Walker County, Georgia, Ott married Margie E. Lively (1901-1981). She was a daughter of Sarah Elizabeth Dill and Lewis Lively. For work, Ott was often occupied as a farmer and/or truck driver. For play, he was heavily involved with America's favorite pastime. Ott was often noted in the local newspaper as managing at least a few amateur baseball teams in the Chattanooga area. (Death certificate via Ancestry .) General Otis "Ott" McDaniel was just 49 years of age when he died on 9 December 1948. The place of death was the Campbell Clinic in Chattanooga, Hamilton County, Tennessee....

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...