Cemetery Work

June 2003
-The 151st Anniversary of Grantville has come around fast. Met with some old residents, and tried to talk to them about genealogy. Some are interested, some not.
-Started photographing the Grantville City Cemetery. It is large, maybe 2000 stones. Will have to wait til it cools off some. Darn those Georgia summers.

May 2003-Went to Grantville, and climbed over the gate (that said no trespassing) and took pics of all tombstones in a cemetery called Bradberry Family Cemetery. It has only about 30 or less stones, and was on the old homeplace. This family was some of the early settlers of this area of Coweta Co.
-Went to the interstate exit for Grantville, and saw a cemetery. It is for the Meadows and McCollum family. I remember when I was a kid, the interstate was coming thru. There was a big "fuss" about them wanting to move the cemetery, and a bigger "fuss" about them NOT moving it. It was not moved. The two families are also early settlers of this area. Took pics of all stones here too.
-Found the other Meadows cemetery. Took pics of this one too. Don't know exaclty why they made two cems, they are only about a mile and a half apart. Maybe a family rift????
-Found the Attaway Cem (Old Emmaus Church) in Grantville too. It was surprizingly clean so I made pictures of the few stones that are there.

April 2003-First week - had another campout, but did do a couple more rows at Oak Hill second section.
-Second week - We started Ebenezer Orignial church site, but was very "jungly", and I'm sure we didn't find all the stones. Went on down the road to the new site, where they changed the name of the church (within the last 20yrs) to New Heights Baptist, and took all tombstone pics in their small cemetery.
-Third week - Went to the black church, New Ebenezer Baptist, who broke off from the Original Ebenezer in 1867, and formed their own church. It is a large cemetery, and it was very hot today (I was dumb enough to go at lunch time). Only got the first two rows completed.

March 2003
-First week - We went to check on a black cemetery off McCollum Sharpsburg Road, they built a Waffle House, and were conserned about them destroying the cemetery. It was there and alright. It is in between a gas station and the Waffle House. It is the site of an old Episcopal-Methodist Church, St Marks. The people moved the church to another site, and the church either fell in or was destroyed. Then the Hill family began using the site to bury its relatives.
-Second week - On my lunch breaks, go to Oak Hill Cemetery and take a couple of rows in the Second section. Each section has at least 10 rows, and a row has a maximum of 47 graves. It was cold this month. Also have a Boy Scout Campout next weekend, so don't think we'll get much more done this month.

Feb 2003
First week - Borrowed a digital and went to town. We took all of the tombstones in the cemetery at a black Church called Summer Hill Baptist just south of down town Newnan.
Third week - Went to Oak Hill Cemetery, and took all stones in Section One (about 370 stones).

Nov 2002
-Finally getting cool enough to work on pictures. Did two cems this week, our relatives in Griffin City Cem and Griffin Memorial Park.
-Did a couple more, only relatives. Only have a regular camera now, wish I had a digital.

June 2002
Went to the 150th Anniversary of the founding of the town of Grantville. It was my homeplace from 1st grade to 12th grade. It used to be a big town, but died down after the closing of the old mill. And then a new mill, West Point Pepperell came to town and gave it new hope, but never fullfilling the promise.

May 2002
As summer approaches, it will be too hot soon to do any picture taking of tombstones. The summers in Georgia are blistering, with sometimes 98% humidity and 90 degree temps, it is hard to do anthing but stay in the water or the air conditioning.

But we will work as we can to take pics of tombstones. My son decided to do his eagle project on cemeteries, and then we fell into taking church pics also, cause so many of the cems are at churches. It just seemed natural to take the church also. Then as we traveled around our county, we saw barns, old buildings, silos, and antebellum homes and took pictures of them also.

May 2001
Our cemetery work began just trying to find all our relatives' graves. But then it expanded as we found more and more people buried at our local cemeteries. Our county cemetery book was published in the late 1980's, but some cemeteries were surveyed as early as 1975. That's a long time ago as deaths go. So we decided to try and update the cemeteries in our county.