Built in 1885 in the Morgana Community near Clarks Hill, South Carolina, the Dothan Methodist Church was active until the 1930s. For a fuller history, you can read more at the South Carolina Picture Project.
There is a small adjacent cemetery that resembles most rural Southern cemeteries. There is one headstone that stood out. It was the grave of Marjorie “Jerry” Scott, a woman who served as an ensign during World War II. She served as a codebreaker. You can read more about her in her obituary. It is estimated of the 10,000 women who served in the war, almost half helped decipher codes on behalf of the United States.
In 2024, I photographed the ruins of the O’Neal AME Church. At the time, I had not realized the cemetery was across the street, hidden in the woods. Recently, the cemetery has been under threat because a massive data center is being built around it. My friend and I decided to visit the cemetery. We were both interested in seeing how close the clearing for the data center was to the property lines and wanting to document any remaining headstones.
We walked the boundary lines of the cemetery. First, the cemetery is completely fenced in, with an approximately 75-foot buffer.
One of the vernacular markers in the cemetery
The cemetery itself was abandoned long ago based on early headstone photos. There is a mixture of professionally engraved headstones, vernacular, Eldren Baileys, and at least two dozen fieldstones. All cemeteries are important, but this cemetery contains the remains of people who were likely enslaved based on birthdate. The last obituary I could locate is from 1967. According to FindAGrave, the last burial appears to be in 1967. From historic aerials, it appears the church’s roof collapsed sometime in the late 1950s.
Reuben (1810-1890) and his wife, Eliza, are documented in the census records for Henry County for 1870 and 1880.Eliza Keith (1820-1895)Thomas ThrasherThe metal fence likely marks off a family plot.
Based on tax records, the ruins of the O’Neal AME Church will likely be demolished in the coming year, since the company “Hampton Technology Park,” out of Atlanta, owns the land being developed now and the land where the church is located. The address for Hampton Technology Park is 1776 Peachtree Street, which lists a few real estate companies as tenants, so further research would be needed to determine who owns the land.
The images below are from Qpublic.
The cemetery boundaryLand owned by Hampton Technology Park
The cemetery should be restored. The people buried here help tell the story of Henry County. Hopefully, there will be enough interest to save it.
The penny indicates someone visited this headstone and left it as a memento.In Black cemetery traditions, a pitcher can represent a connection or passage to the afterlife. Until people started stealing the items, these grave goods could be found frequently in Geechee Gullah cemeteries.
On June 22, 1918, one of the worst train accidents in United States history happened near Hammond, Indiana. While it was the worst circus accident in US history, it was only the third worst US train accident in 1918. Early in the morning, an empty troop train (a military train used to carry personnel and supplies) crashed into the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus train, that had stopped to address mechanical issues. The troop train’s conductor had fallen asleep and missed signals to stop. The accident killed 85 people and injured over 100 more.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
Just five years earlier, the fraternal order Showmen’s League of America was formed in Chicago for outdoor showmen. They purchased a large 750 lot section in Woodlawn Cemetery. It was here where the mass funeral of the circus performers and staff were held. According to The Indianapolis News (June 25, 1918), 57 people were buried in the cemetery. Unfortunately, many people were not identified. The circus held a large funeral, and the unidentified bodies were placed in a mass grave. For those who could be identified, they were placed in individual graves.
Image from The Chicago Tribune
The section is still being utilized today. If you ever decide to visit, the section is at the front of the cemetery. The section is flanked by four elephants with downturned trunks, which represents mourning.
If you’re in Chicago and love cemeteries, it’s obligatory to visit Mount Carmel Cemetery. There’s the Italian Bride and the famous spinning marker (posts coming later on those), but it’s most famous resident is Al Capone.
Capone became a mob boss by the age of 26, went to prison by 33, and died right after he turned 48. Upon his death in Florida, his body was transported back to Chicago to be buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery. By 1952, he was moved to Mount Carmel Cemetery after his mother passed. He is in a family plot.
For those who spend a lot of time on FindAGrave, you know that the site was started because the creator, Jim Tipton, visited Al Capone’s grave and realized that others might be excited to see his grave. The site began in 1996. In a 2000 article in USA Today, he shares, ‘People come and pour their hearts out because they’re writing (about) their dead mother or father. I feel oddly voyeuristic, but a lot of people have written me saying it gives a sense of closure.’ At the time the article was published, the site had 2.5 million graves. Today, there over 265 million memorials listed.
Emmett Louis Till (1941–1955) was a 14-year-old African American boy who was abducted and murdered in Mississippi after being accused of flirting with Carolyn Bryant, a white store owner’s wife. His lynching became a national story when his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted on an open-casket funeral so the world could witness the brutal violence inflicted on her son.
For a more detailed account, Wikipedia provides a good summary.
He was buried in Burr Oak Cemetery on Chicago’s South Side. When a friend and I visited the cemetery the day after a rainstorm, the grounds were waterlogged and poorly drained. We were unable to approach his grave without wading through several inches of standing water. It is unfortunate that the cemetery contends with this issue, as my friend and I visited several other cemeteries that day, none of which had significant standing water.
Last summer, I organized a group of volunteers to help document a historic cemetery in the Atlanta area. As I spoke with the volunteers and answered their questions during the event, I realized it would be beneficial to write down the steps for preparing to document a cemetery and then doing it.
Some of this may seem like common sense, but if you’ve never documented a cemetery before, I hope this post will help you prepare when you decide to do so.
The Benjamin Walker plot shows that walking around a marker reveals more information that is good to document.
What to Wear
Closed-toed shoes-Whether the cemetery is manicured or overgrown, there will be bugs that will want to bite you and holes that you might step into, and closed-toed shoes will minimize the risk and possible injury. I would also consider boots if you are going into an overgrown cemetery during the warmer months. (I’ve stepped in enough holes over the years to know sturdy shoes minimize injuries.)
Long pants-I know some people will find this suggestion ridiculous, but pants will help protect your legs from plant overgrowth and any living thing that might want to take a bite out of your leg.
Bug spray-Insects, especially mosquitoes, love me, so I always have bug spray. It will also help repel any other insects that call the cemetery home. (I am still traumatized by stepping into an ant hill and hundreds of ants were very angry I disturbed their home. I had bug spray to quickly kill them.)
Hat – While I am not a hat person, they help keep the sun off your face and prevent ticks from getting into your hair.
Sunglasses – While these are self-explanatory, some cemeteries have so few trees that it can get unbearably hot, and the bright sun can make it hard to see headstones, especially those with a reflective shine.
Sunscreen– If you’re like me, this will be especially helpful on really sunny days.
Water
What to Bring
Camera-In a perfect world, you are using a camera with GPS-enabled. If you are using your phone, most people have geotagging already activated. If you are using a digital camera, some mirrorless and many DLSRs have internal GPS. GPS is helpful especially when you upload to FindAGrave because it will geolocate where a grave is on a memorial.
Gloves-These may be useful if you need to clean a marker that has become embedded in the ground.
Flashlight-This is to help angle light to help reading a headstone easier. Some people will recommend using foil to get an impression, a grave rubbing, or something that involves touching the marker. I always recommend not touching any marker, especially the older the are. The older they are, the more fragile a marker will be. Also, sometimes even newer markers can be unstable because the headstone has become disconnected from the base. In most states, it is illegal to touch a grave marker without the permission of the cemetery and/or the family. (For the love of all things graveyard, do not use shaving cream to get a better read of a headstone.)
How to Photograph
Most cemeteries bury their residents in rows with an east- west orientation. However, due to age and space availability, this might not be the case in some cemeteries.
Many taphophiles will do what is called “mow the row,” l which essentially means walking the row and getting everything on that row.
While it is important to get a good clean shot of a marker, it is also helpful to step away from the marker and try to include a wider shot of where the headstone js. This way someone can use a combination of GPS and landmark photos to help a visitor find a grave marker.
If the marker is standing, walk all sides of the marker because it could include more names or other information that would be good to document.
This is an example of how to include the full marker, along with enough background to provide visual clues.
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