Grave Stories

Tales from Area Cemeteries

by Dean Poling • photos by Jessica Pope

Cemeteries are final resting places. They are filled with loved ones, but they are also filled with stories. Stories that do not rest.

This fall, the locally based Snake Nation Press is scheduled to publish Valdosta author Morris Smith’s third short-story collection, “Above Ground: Cemetery Stories.”

In the months to come, the city of Valdosta is expected to unveil an online map plotting Sunset Hill Cemetery.

Until the book, until the online map, Valdosta Scene shares a few graveyard stories.

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Geraldine McLeod Clifton and Dorothy Peterson Neisen actively sought the region’s smaller cemeteries to compile in their book, “Church and Family Cemeteries in Lowndes County, Georgia, 1825-2005.”

In one case, they pushed deep into woods. They hoped to discover a small cemetery rumored to be in this patch of tangled woods near Interstate 75 and Franks Creek Road.

To reach the cemetery, the women had enlisted the help of Lee Hodges, whose ancestors are buried in the hidden graveyard. Armed with a machete, Hodges hacked through the overgrowth as Clifton and Neisen followed behind him.

They discovered a small cemetery of about a dozen graves. The majority of the graves were planted in the late 1800s. The earliest grave is etched with a death date of July 24, 1872. The last person to be interred here, according to the tombstones found, died Feb. 2, 1910.

Clifton and Neisen took notes from each grave marker. They recorded the names, birth dates and death dates of each stone for each person.

In their book, this cemetery’s location and inhabitants are listed as the Barfield-Hodges Cemetery. It is one of dozens of the county’s smaller cemeteries to be listed and catalogued in this thick, hard-cover book of 565 pages.

Released a few years ago, the Clifton-Neisen volume updates the smaller cemeteries listed in a similar work up to 1987 by the late Charles Adams. The newer book inventories other cemeteries, such as the hidden Barfield-Hodges yard, which were undiscovered and not chronicled in Adams’ book.

They also figuratively unearthed some fascinating stories during these adventures.

They discovered one cemetery, which is only one grave, the resting place of J.D. Ford, in a lonely spot near Clyattville’s paper mill.

The book has a small reminder that the lives of some inmates end at the Valdosta State Prison and their bodies have nowhere else to go from there. The historians were not allowed to visit the prison’s cemetery, but the book notes the cemetery is on the “grounds of the prison. Not accessible to the public.” About 10 graves with no markers are listed with Valdosta Correctional.

There is the story of Mary Sandwich, whose dates of birth and passing were not listed. Her story, however, dates back many years. She was the teacher of a school in Olympia, a small sawmill town south of Clyattville. “She was fond of high-spirited horses and rode one to school every day,” the book notes. “She was told by her friends that a horse would one day kill her.” She told them that if riding a horse led to her death then her friends should bury her on the spot where she fell. Mary Sandwich died riding a horse. Her request was remembered and honored. Mary Sandwich is buried where she fell.

The book contains some anecdotes such as these but its main mission is to note the region’s small, family and church cemeteries; inventory them as best as possible (markers are missing in many cemeteries); and provide detailed instructions to their locations.

The historians also hold true to the book’s title of “Church and Family Cemeteries.” Readers will not find listings for larger cemeteries, such as Sunset Hill and Riverview. These cemeteries were included in Charles Adams’ original 1987 book. Genealogy Unlimited compiled Adams’ listings for Sunset Hill and Riverview, again ending in 1987, into a paperback volume a few years ago to supplement “Church and Family Cemeteries.”

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Walking through Sunset Hill Cemetery is like passing through the shroud of Valdosta’s nearly 150-year history, where dates from the 1800s can be seen only yards away from dates of the 21st century. Headstones are touchstones for local history which is interwoven within the history of a state and nation.

Several tombstones mark the resting places of Confederate soldiers from the American Civil War, or the War Between the States and the War of Northern Aggression as it was once often called in the South. With Valdosta being located in the heart of the Deep South, discovering Confederate symbols on markers is not surprising. Each year, the United Daughters of the Confederacy place flags on the Confederate markers. But Sunset Hill Cemetery speaks of that war’s division of a nation, with the grave of a Union soldier also buried on the grounds.

Tombstones represent soldiers from every war since. Veterans from the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Persian Gulf are all here, testaments to Valdosta’s commitment to the nation and the city’s patriotic drive to serve the country.

There are markers to the city and the South’s past transgressions where slavery is concerned. Many city cemeteries throughout the South have the shame of a large portion of plots for the unmarked and unnamed graves of former slaves, for the people of color of the South’s past who were only freed through death and providence. Sunset Hill was no different. Anonymous slaves were buried on a portion of the cemetery. But Sunset Hill cemetery is different in that local citizens, led by the Rev. Willie Wade, built the Unknown Slave Monument on the site. Since its installation in the 1990s, several Southern cities have expressed interest in the monument and some have imitated the monument in their cemeteries.

The cemetery is filled with people who lived full lives before moving onto this other city of Valdosta, but there are also the tragedies of those who became Sunset Hill residents far too soon in their young lives.

Discovering the words on the headstones of the young who have passed remains poignant even though a century or so ago. “Budded on Earth to bloom in Heaven” is written of a small boy whose headstone is dated 1878-1880.

For a girl who died at the promise of a new year, a marker reads, “Her springtime had the promise of the opening bud. Her summer the fragrance of a full-blown flower. But God’s finger touched her and she slept at the dawn of the New Year 1898.”

Such poetic lines can also be found on those who did live full lives. The marker of a woman who died March 4, 1898 – the eve of her 78th birthday – reads that she “was shaken from life’s stem by the breath of a passing angel to drop into the lap of heaven.”

These inscriptions suit the era of their honorees’ passing as does the layout of the cemetery which remains similar to its original design more than a century later. Sunset Hill came into its own during the Victorian age, which served as a period when people viewed cemeteries as a place similar to a park, where its inhabitants could rest and enjoy the scenery.

A legend of Sunset Hill Cemetery is its connection to the story of Gypsy, the circus elephant that rampaged through Valdosta in the early 1900s. One old legend claimed that Gypsy is buried in Sunset Hill but that is not true. Gypsy was buried in several pieces in the Cherry Creek region where she was shot. James “Whiskey Red” O’Rourke, however, is buried in Sunset Hill. O’Rourke was the trainer whom Gypsy killed before embarking on her Valdosta rampage. Circus employees visited O’Rourke’s grave during their annual trips to Valdosta for many years following his and Gypsy’s death.

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Earl Lang’s story is one of patience, history and honor. Lang is a man who not only determined to find his family’s roots but to pay his respects along the way.

Many people researching their family trees are content to find the documentation that proves their ancestors existed. They seek newspaper obituaries, birth records, death certificates. They scour the Internet and the libraries of area historical societies. They read documents often in faraway courthouses. Earl Lang pursued these traditional genealogical methods too, but he took his search one step further.

He sought touchstones, things that he could see and feel, which proved his ancestors’ place on this earth. He sought gravestones. He charted the Lang family’s American roots to 1744, when Robert Lang arrived from England, and he has found the graves for each preceding generation in cemeteries across the nation.

“It kind of bothered me that I didn’t know where some of my family had died or if their graves were marked,” Lang said in 2003. “I wanted to know.”

It was this search, which had transformed into a sense of family obligation, which brought Earl Lang from his home and business in Frankston, Texas, to the Sunset Hill Cemetery in Valdosta, Ga., in 2003. A tall man wearing a cowboy hat, Lang found South Georgia no warmer than the heat of the East Texas sun. And while he found the burial plots of his ancestors, Lang found no markers for their graves. So, he purchased two headstones from Valdosta’s Parrish Monument Company. A small price to pay to honor a family’s past. Earl Lang traveled to Valdosta, on a weekend in late May 2003, to visit the graves.

Through patient research, Earl Lang learned his great-grandfather’s name. He learned of his family’s connections with Georgia. He found a wealth of information and gravestones in Camden County, Ga. He also learned of a family tale that placed some of the Langs moving from Camden County to Valdosta and Lowndes County, possibly as refugees following the Civil War.

So, Earl Lang turned his attention to Valdosta.

With help from the Lowndes County Historical Society, Lang discovered George Lang Sr. (1806-1872), who served as a Confederate cavalry captain; his wife, Mary Thomas Lang (1813-1885), the daughter of Joseph and Sarah Jones Thomas, whom George Lang married in 1829, and they reportedly had numerous children. They found George and Mary’s son, Edward Lang (1832-1882), who served in the Confederacy’s Co. B 11th Battalion Ga. State Guard Cavalry. And Edward’s wife, Euphemia H. Crawford Lang (1828-1885), whom he married in 1853; she was the daughter of Malcom F. and Amanda Craven Crawford.

Research indicates that the Langs were prosperous in the Valdosta of the late 1800s. They reportedly had a large plantation and numerous slaves, and the men had served honorably in the Confederacy, according to Lang’s research. So why nothing but a small stone to mark only one of the graves?

Lang has a theory. He believes their prominence may have prompted them to intentionally seek humble burial sites. Perhaps, Earl Lang suggests, his ancestors feared retribution for owning so many slaves or serving in the Confederacy. Yet, many of the graves in Sunset Hill hold the remains of past generations who owned slaves. Several graves in Sunset Hill hold the bodies of Confederate soldiers. These plots are marked.

Theories aside, the reason why the Valdosta Langs had no headstones may remain a mystery never to be answered or, at least, unanswered until additional research discovers more clues.

There were other Langs too. Such as Charles Lang (1875-1910), and Dr. George Lang, but they had markers on their graves. The burial plots for George Sr., Mary, Edward and Euphemia were essentially unmarked.

Moving from left to right, oldest to youngest, the graves likely went from George Lang Sr. to Euphemia Lang.

Lang visited Valdosta and Sunset Hill Cemetery, finding a small marker on the grave believed to be George Lang’s. But any information the marker may have once held was lost to time. Earl Lang was unable to produce anything from rubbings of the marker and, again, the other graves were unmarked.

So, Earl Lang ordered the two headstones from Parrish Monument, with a request they be completed with great speed. Lang wanted the headstones to contain the buried’s names, dates of births and deaths, wedding dates, military service where appropriate, and the names of each person’s parents.

Earl Lang departed for Texas to return a short time later when the headstones were completed and installed at Sunset Hill.

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