After dropping Christi off at the airport in Panama City to fly back to frozen Nebraska, I headed for Greenville, Ala. I’d long wanted to visit Greenville because it was the home of Joseph R. Abrams, inventor of the cast iron grave cover. I must note that there are others who made attempts at earlier versions but Abrams was one of the first to patent it. In 1875, Egbert Sipes of Pennsylvania filed a patent for an improved design.

I originally wrote about Joseph Abrams back in 2015 after I’d found one of his cast iron grave covers in Fairburn City Cemetery in Fulton County, Ga. I had never seen anything quite like it and I still find them fascinating.

Abrams moved from South Carolina to Greenville (in Butler County) sometime after he married Laura Porter in 1856. When he wasn’t working as a railroad contractor (1860s) or an insurance salesman (1870s), he loved inventing things and one of them was the cast iron grave cover, originally targeted to protect the graves of children. I had seen photos online of several cast iron grave covers in Pioneer Cemetery and nearby Magnolia Cemetery, where Joseph and Laura Abrams are buried. I’ll be writing about Magnolia Cemetery later. But for now, let’s focus on Pioneer Cemetery.

Established in 1819

Greenville became Butler County’s seat of government in 1822. Residents set aside a two-acre plot for a church and graveyard, marked on three sides by what are now South Park Street (originally named Cemetery Street), Walnut, and Dunklin Streets. The western side of the churchyard and cemetery, where the First United Methodist Church stands today, was then the town’s western boundary.

Pioneer Cemetery is one of the oldest I’ve ever visited in Alabama. Established in 1819, it’s Greenville’s oldest cemetery. The oldest known grave is that of James Dunklin (1779-1827), but there are many unmarked and “lost” graves that may be older than that.

Captain William Butler, for whom the county is named, is buried there along with many Greenville/Butler County pioneers. The last burial took place in 1961 when Lily Black Stanley (1876-1961) was buried there. There are almost 300 recorded memorials for Pioneer Cemetery on Find a Grave.

When I visited Pioneer Cemetery, it was undergoing restoration work. These efforts are often expensive and take a lot of time. In 2008, Greenville began working hand in hand with The Pioneer Cemetery Preservation Association  (PCPA) to accomplish this. The PCPA has been fortunate to receive grants from the Alabama Historical Commission to help with expenses. So when you see piles of bricks and mounds of dirt in some of my photos, it’s not from neglect but a snapshot of a moment in time amid this restoration in February 2019.

I didn’t photograph James Dunklin’s grave but I did see the large memorial boulder placed next to the grave of Capt. William Butler. His grave has a connection to Joseph Abrams in a roundabout way.

A Bloody Death

A Virginia native born in 1759, Capt. William Butler fought in the War of 1812. He lived in Georgia for a few years before coming to Alabama. On March 18, 1818, Capt. Butler (accompanied by Daniel Shaw and William Gardner) was delivering a message to nearby Fort Dale when he and the two men were violently attacked by Native Americans led by warrior Savannah Jack. The account I read describes how they were killed in such horrific detail that I won’t share it here. It’s graphic by even today’s standards. It was later referred to as “Butler’s Massacre” by some.

The men’s remains were buried in the nearby forest and left there for many years until the 1850s when a group of locals had them moved to Greenville Cemetery. One of them was Eliza Taylor Kidd Porter, the wife of Judge Benjamin F. Porter and mother of Laura Porter, who married Joseph Abrams. The remains of Capt. Butler, Shaw, and Gardner were exhumed and re-interred with much ceremony at Greenville Cemetery in 1858.

Eliza Porter paid for the small marker to be placed on Capt. Butler’s grave in 1861. The large boulder was not placed until 1926 by the Father Ryan Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). I’m not sure why Capt. Butler’s death date is inscribed as 1820 instead of 1818 on it.

The Caldwells

I’d like to share the Caldwells graves with you because not only do they have cast iron grave covers marking their burial site, they also have a handsome marble gravestone in front of it.

Born in 1801, North Carolina native John Carruthers Caldwell helped establish Greenville’s Presbyterian Church. In 1819, he married local Butler County miss Elizabeth Black. John became a prominent merchant, jeweler, and goldsmith. He also served as justice of the peace.

The fact that John Caldwell was a jeweler leads me to believe he knew and appreciated beautiful, artistic items. It’s my belief he probably knew Joseph Abrams and was aware of the fascinating new invention he’d come up with. It doesn’t surprise me at all that he had two planned for his and Elizabeth’s graves to accompany their grave marker.

The cast iron covers that top the Caldwell graves feature shell finials on top. Sometimes these are stolen or vandalized, but it thrilled me to see these both intact. You can also see the acorns surrounding the finials, symbolizing wisdom. To get a better look at home these pieces come together, you can see Abrams’ original 1873 patent here.

Abrams patented his invention in 1873, shortly after the Caldewells died in 1871 and 1872. So there may have been a delay in their placement. The name plates originally attached to the back broke off and were lost. This is a common occurrence since the cast iron lattice work sometimes became brittle and broke. But the pair are still a great example of this invention.

Mother and Daughter

There are two pairs of cast iron grave covers at the rear of Pioneer Cemetery and both were in the process of being restored. I’m featuring the graves of Lucinda Brazzell Taylor and her daughter, Sarah Taylor, because the both still have their nameplates.

The story behind this mother/daughter duo is intriguing because there are some holes in their history. We do know that the mother was Lucinda Brazzell Taylor. I’m using the spelling Brazzell for her maiden name although it has been written as Brassell and Braswell in other places. Born around 1812, she married Ludwell Taylor in Montgomery, Ala. in 1832. Of their four children, daughter Sarah was born on June 23, 1836.

Ludwell Taylor passed away in 1842 and Lucinda remarried to a William Turner in 1849. They had a son, Richard, but he only lived a year. Interestingly, in the 1850 U.S. Census, William Turner is not listed but baby Richard is. I can only surmise that William Turner died soon after they married. In the 1860 U.S. Census, Lucinda and Sarah were living with the family of Marcus Lane, a successful Greenville attorney. Marcus was the husband of Lucinda’s daughter (and Sarah’s sister), Frances Taylor Lane.

Lucinda died on March 25, 1868 at age 56 after a “protracted illness.”

Although Lucinda had remarried, the last name on her grave cover is Taylor. You’ll note that the finial on her grave cover is not a shell like the Caldwells but a cup or urn, which is rare. The cover is also decorated with carved flowers instead of acorns like the Caldwells’ grave covers.

Patented Proof

I found a record for Sarah’s marriage to a John Kelly in Butler County in 1864. But when she appears in the 1870 U.S. Census, she is listed as Sarah Taylor and living next door to the Lanes. She died at age 36 on Feb. 20, 1872.

So how do we know for certain that this is a Joseph R. Abrams cast iron grave cover? As I wrote in 2015, Joseph was a true patent enthusiast and he applied for many of them over the years. You can see the notation for it at the end of Sarah’s grave cover if you look closely. Although Abrams’ grave cover was not patented in 1868 when Lucinda died, I suspect they did not install it until after Sarah’s death.

You might also notice that these covers are flush with the ground. Others I have seen have a concrete, brick, or stone base underneath them.

At the time, I didn’t know the connection but beside the Taylor graves is an obelisk for Frances Taylor Lane and her husband, Marcus. Frances died on April 18, 1868 at age 34, the day after giving birth to a baby girl who lived less than four months. This happened less than a month after her mother, Lucinda, died. Marcus, who was by then a judge, died on July 28, 1870 at age 45. The couple left behind five children.

Anonymous Graves

I pointed out earlier that many cast iron grave covers have missing nameplates that have snapped off at some point. As a result, unless they are next to a stone grave marker or someone has other proof, the identity of the deceased is often unknown. This can often pose problems if a cemetery does not have good burial records.

Just down the way from the Taylor graves is the grave of Marjorie Dunklin Padgett. Born in 1845, she married Elam Padgett in 1868. She died on Jan. 10, 1872 after giving birth to an infant son. Like the daughter of Marcus and Frances Taylor Lane, the child died four months later.

I suspect the two cast iron grave covers (one topped by a shell finial) beside Marjorie’s grave are for two of their children, whose graves Abrams originally intended for his invention to protect. One may be for the baby born in 1872 but nobody knows for sure. Both graves have a brick base beneath them.

I’m just getting started with stories about Pioneer Cemetery. More to come in Part II.

Last week, I dove into some of the history behind Destin’s evolution from a humble fishing village to a sunny tourist destination. Now let’s take a look at some of the other stones at Marler Memorial Cemetery.

One tall marker stands out. It’s not for a Marler or a Destin but a Knapp, the only one buried here. Thanks to again to H.C. “Hank” Klein, I was able to uncover some of the story of how he ended up in the cemetery.

Born in 1871 in Illinois, Thomas Morse Knapp married Cecily Flynn in Clayton, Mo. in 1897. According to the U.S. 1900 federal census, Edward and Cecily, were living in Havana, Cuba, at the headquarters of the Department of Matanzas and Santa Clara Hospital Corps. Edward had served in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and stayed on to work as a clerk.

Plans of a Homecoming

Edward continued working as a civil servant for the U.S. Army in Cuba until Nov. 30, 1910, when he resigned. He and his family planned to join Edward’s parents in Northwest Florida, near Destin, when they returned to America. Edward’s parents had staked a claim under the Homestead Act of 1862 on land in Shoals, Fla., (now Miramar Beach) in 1909. One of their lots could have been where Edward and Cecily hoped to build their new home.

On Dec. 26, 1910, four weeks after Edward retired, he was moving his family to Shoals when he drowned in the Choctawhatchee Bay between Santa Rosa and Shoals. According to Hank, an affidavit from Capt. Billy Marler (who you read about last week) said Edward fell off a motorboat while moving furniture to his home in Shoals and died. He was pulled from the water, but no one knew how to resuscitate him.

However, Edward’s Find a Grave memorial includes a January 15, 1911 article from the Pensacola Morning Journal that has a different account of his death:

The body was not found until Thursday, Jan. 5, 1911. It had come to the surface and floated near his home, where it was first seen and brought ashore by the loving hands of his wife, who was keeping a constant vigil for it along the beach. All other means had been exhausted and it became apparent that they must wait until the body should rise and float. The great privilege was given his wife of being the first to rescue the last earthly remains of him whom she so fondly loved from the maw of the hungry sea.

I’m not sure which of these two stories is true but sadly, Edward was gone. Cecily remarried in 1920 to Rufus McChesey and moved back to Missouri where they lived until her death in 1954. They are buried together in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, Mo.

“Gone to a Fairer Land”

Last week, I told you how Carrie and Capt. Billy Marler lost eight children in infancy, all buried at Marler Memorial Cemetery. The Destins were also no stranger to tragedy. Leonard Destin’s son-in-law, Frederick, would know it all too well.

Born in 1869 in what was then called East Pass, Leonard’s daughter Fannie grew up with her siblings as her father fished. Excerpts of her childhood journal exist on Ancestry.com. Here’s one entry from July 1881:

Sun shining brightly.  Wind from the north.  Read my lesson to Uncle Elias then helped Priss.  My sister Jane is with us yet.  Mr. Woodward, her husband is at Pensacola.  Brother George came in last night.  Very glad to see him.  Wind from the north yet.  Green corn is all gone I am sorry to say.  Read lesson to Uncle Elias.  Wind is blowing from the west quite strong.

Fannie grew up and married fisherman (and later a lighthouse keeper) Robert Studebaker in 1898. Their daughter, Martha, was born in 1900. On March 2, 1902, she gave birth to another daughter, who died the same day. Martha died the next day. Mother and daughter share a marker located back against the fence.

Robert Studebaker moved to Cromanton Bay, Fla. and remarried to Hattie Pratt in 1903. In a sad twist of fate, Hattie would die on Nov. 15, 1903 after giving birth to a daughter, Lillian. The baby also died. Robert married a final time to Nina Ecker in 1909. He died in 1947 at age 73 and Nina died in 1949 at age 70. They are buried together in Panama City’s Greenwood Cemetery, as is Robert and Fannie’s daughter Martha Studebaker Brown.

Death in New Mexico

Earlier, I shared an excerpt from Fannie Destin Studebaker’s childhood journal where she mentions her sister, Jane Destin Woodward. Jane married Frederick Harlow Woodward in 1875 and together they had several children, including a son name named George born in 1892. This is a photo of her with her oldest son, Edward, sitting on her lap.

Jane died on July 31, 1901 at age 45. Her marker is broken and in sad condition. Frederick died on Nov. 2, 1908 and is buried beside her.

Son George Woodward grew up to be a fisherman. He married Minnie Marler, I’m not sure where she fits into the Marler family tree. But George’s health began to suffer in the late 1910s. Like many people at that time, he went to New Mexico in hopes that a dryer climate might help. He may have had tuberculosis.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. George died on Feb. 8, 1922 at age 29. Minnie accompanied his body back to Destin and he was buried in Marler Memorial Cemetery beside his parents. I’m not sure if Minnie remarried after his death or what happened to her.

A Mysterious Fire

One small homemade grave marker caught my attention but I didn’t have time to look up the person until I was writing my blog post this week. A sad story unfolded that is still shrouded in questions.

Born to Milton Shirah and Elgin Inez Sprinkle Shirah in 1938, Shirley Annette Shirah grew up in Alabama. She was a graduate of Central High School in Phenix City, Ala. She married a few years later and the family moved to the Destin area.

On the night of May 21, 1963, while her husband was working out of state, Shirley went with some friends to the dog races in Erbo. She returned late that night and told the babysitter she was going over to the vacant house she and her husband owned nearby “to get something”. In the wee hours of the next morning, Shirley was found badly burned across the street from the vacant house, which was now on fire.

Shirley was whisked to the hospital but never recovered. She died on June 7, having been unable to tell the police what happened. A Pensacola News Journal article detailed how one of the group she attended the races with was suspected of being involved in a bank robbery and had left town soon after the fire. I could find nothing more. I’m sure Shirley’s family was devastated by her death.

Next time, I’ll be at nearby Brooks Memorial Cemetery in Fort Walton.

I’ve traveled down Highway 98 from Marler Memorial Cemetery to Brooks Memorial Cemetery in Fort Walton Beach, which is about a seven-mile trip. This is where my 2019 Panhandle adventure ends. But it won’t be the last.

I found much less information about Brooks Memorial Cemetery than I did about Marler. The oldest recorded burials on Find a Grave for Brooks are from 1906 (two children), with a total of 251. There’s a short YouTube video that says there are over 500 burials here. I have a hard time believing there are 250 unmarked burials here but maybe the person who made it has a source I don’t have access to.

“Sonny, Don’t Be Shot in the Back.”

During the Civil War, Confederate soldiers from the First Florida Regiment set up an encampment they named Camp Walton. One soldier who served and later became the first permanent settler in the area was John Thomas Brooks (1838-1917).

In his book, A Miracle Strip – Through the Lens of Arturo and the Hearts of Many, Antonio Mennillo wrote that Brooks’ experiences prepared him for that role.

When he was 12 years of age his widowed mother packed her family and family belongings into a covered wagon and left their native North Carolina to take up a land grant in the vicinity of Geneva, Ala. Tom was 18 when the Civil War broke out and he was one of the first volunteers from Alabama. Going to war with this parting injunction from his mother, ‘Sonny, don’t be shot in the back. My prayers will follow you.’

After the war, Brooks discovered that the Alabama home of his mother (who had remarried) was burned down by organized war deserters. Brooks became a sawyer at Reddick’s Sawmill in Walton County and married Harriett Catherine Thomas in 1866. They settled on 111 acres of waterfront land, a tract that now is part of Fort Walton Beach, and began to raise a family.

Camp Walton was eventually renamed Brooks Landing after Tom. It was changed to Fort Walton in 1932 (after Camp Walton). In the 1950s, the name was changed again to Fort Walton Beach in an effort to attract more tourists to the area.

Do you remember Capt. Billy Marler from the last two blog posts? I wasn’t surprised to find that there was a connection with his family and the Brooks family. Tom Brooks’ daughter, Camella, was Capt. Billy’s second wife. The two married around 1904 after his first wife, Carrie, died.

I couldn’t find a picture of it, but Tom opened the first hotel in Fort Walton Beach and called it (naturally) Brooks Hotel. Over the years, Fort Walton Beach (like Destin) would become a tourist mecca for sunshine-seeking folks.

Tom died in 1917 at age 78 and Harriett died in 1920 at age 71. Together, they had eight children who lived to adulthood.

In His Father’s Footsteps

The eldest of Tom’s children, Thomas Clairmon “Clem” Brooks was born in 1873. He loved being near the ocean like his father. By the time he was 18, he was operating his own fishing schooner out of Pensacola. In 1896, he married Emma Lenera Pryor. They would have several children together.

Thomas C. Brooks Jr., born on May 15, 1909 died 16 months later on Nov. 16, 1910. According to the local newspaper, little Thomas “had not been well for several days but it had not been considered dangerous until a short time before his death.”

Clem entered the government lighthouse service and would operate the Capt St. George Lighthouse from 1921-1925.

I’m not sure if Clem and Emma divorced or if she died. I could find no record of her after 1921. But in 1924, he married Ona “Onie” Stewart. Clem died on June 5, 1940 at age 66. Onie died in 1957 at age 73.

A Tale of Two Brothers

I noticed two military graves for two brothers, both served in World War II. As I would soon learn, one survived the war. The other did not.

Born on May 9, 1918, Averette “Avery” Aaron Hinson was the son of Don Green Hinson and Hettie Elizabeth Hinson. A graduate of Fort Walton High School, Avery attended Pasadena Junior College in California, then the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech). On Nov. 5, 1941, Avery entered Army Air Corps pilot training at the school in Columbus, Miss. and was commissioned.

Avery joined his squadron in Greensboro, S.C. shortly before they were sent overseas. He was killed in action in North Africa on Feb. 14, 1943. He would be posthumously awarded a Purple Heart in April 1943. His squadron commander Capt. R.J. Clize said of him, “

Averette applied himself so thoroughly to all duties, and proved to be so trustworthy that on the move to Africa, I gave him command of an appreciable portion of the squadron en route. He did a magnificent job, many times under difficult circumstances, and joined the remainder of the squadron with all men under his command safe and in perfect condition.

Avery’s remains were brought home for burial in Brooks Memorial Cemetery. His father, Don, had already passed away in 1938.

Avery’s brother, Don Gene Hinson, was born in 1926. So he had to wait until November 1944 to enlist in the U.S. Army. He served for about two years. I don’t know if he served overseas. He died in 1988 in Sandy Springs, Md. at the age of 61. He is buried beside his brother Avery.

End of the Road

This marks the end of my 2019 Florida Panhandle adventure. I returned in 2020 to visit a few cemeteries in Pensacola, so be on the lookout for those posts. But first, I’ve got to get through the rest of 2019 and my next stop is in Greenville, Ala. on the way home.

I hope you’ll join me for more cemetery adventures and stories behind the stones.