Now that we’ve got the Faulkner/Falkner family sorted out, let’s move on to the other folks buried at Oxford Memorial Cemetery.

A Transplanted Patriot

It wasn’t until this week that I realized I’d managed to photograph the grave of the only Revolutionary War veteran buried in the cemetery. This fellow has a Georgia connection.

Born on May 6, 1759 in Luenberg, Va., Daniel Green McKie was one of three sons born to Scottish immigrant Michael McKie. In 1778 at age 19, Daniel joined Hobson’s Virginia Regiment under the command of Gen. Nathanael Greene. Now that name rings a bell! You can read about Gen. Greene and how his remains were moved from Savannah, Ga.’s Colonial Cemetery to Johnson Square in 1901 in this blog post.

McKie fought during the entire Revolutionary War and won praise for his actions at the Battles of Stone Mountain and Guilford Courthouse. He was rewarded with a promotion to the rank of Lieutenant.

On March 14, 1794, Lt. McKie wed Frances Herndon, a direct descendant of Sir Dudley Diggs, a Colonial governor of Virginia. They moved to Columbia, S.C. and raised six boys together. After experiencing financial difficulties in 1836, the lure of cheap land in Mississippi due to the Chickasaw Cession spurred McKie to move his family again. He died in Holly Springs, Miss. on Nov. 16, 1839 at age 80.

At the dedication of his grave at Oxford Memorial by the David Reese Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1927, McKie’s granddaughter is reported to have said, “He must have been a picturesque figure as he always wore full Colonial dress, exactly as we see in pictures of Washington and LaFayette.”

The Oxford-based chapter of the Mississippi Society of the Sons of the American Revolution is named after Lieut. Daniel McKie.

A Little-Known War

There’s another soldier buried at Oxford Memorial, but he died at the start of a war we don’t often associate with Mississippi. That’s the Mexican-American War.

The Mexican-American War (1846-1848) marked the first U.S. armed conflict chiefly fought on foreign soil. It pitted a politically divided and militarily unprepared Mexico against the expansionist-minded administration of U.S. President James K. Polk, who believed the U.S. had a “manifest destiny” to spread across the continent to the Pacific Ocean.

There was strong popular support for the war in many states. In Mississippi, the response to a call for 1,000 volunteers was so great that by June 1, 1846, an estimated 17,000 men were in Vicksburg wanting to enlist.

Among them was 25-year-old Thomas L. Jones, son of Georgia native and War of 1812 veteran John Peyton Jones and Tabitha Wheelwright Whatley Jones. He enlisted as a private and was assigned to Company K (the Tombigee Guards) of the First Mississippi, which became known as the Mississippi Rifles.

But it was not to be. While waiting with his fellow soldiers to head out, Thomas contracted congestive fever, which is sometimes thought to be malaria. He died on July 12, 1846 in Vicksburg.

Thomas is buried to the right of his parents in the center of a circle of trees.

There’s a heartfelt inscription on the back of his monument, which is a broken column. This indicates a life cut short.

Uncle of a Confederate General

As we were exploring, I noticed a surname I was familiar with, one well known in Civil War history. Augustus Baldwin Longstreet (1790-1870) was the uncle of Confederate General James Longstreet. I wrote about him and his grave at Gainesville, Ga.’s Alta Vista Cemetery in 2017.

Born in Augusta, Ga. on Sept. 22, 1790 to Hannah Randolph and William Longstreet, Augustus Longstreet wore many hats during his lifetime. He graduated from Yale University in 1811 and was admitted to the Georgia bar in 1815. He met Frances Eliza Parke and they married in 1817. Of their eight children, only two — daughters Frances Eliza and Virginia Lafayette — lived to adulthood.

In 1821, Longstreet began a term in the Georgia General Assembly representing Greene County, a term cut short the following year when the assembly appointed him to serve for three years as the judge of the Superior Court of the Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit. In 1824, Longstreet was campaigning for the U.S. Congress when the death of his first-born child, Alfred, prompted him to withdraw from the race. Longstreet’s grief led him to earnestly read the Bible and to pray, and soon he was “a thorough believer in Christianity.”

After his judgeship ended, Longstreet and his family moved to Augusta. He joined the Methodist church in 1827 and felt called to preach the following year. In 1828, he was licensed to preach locally and his full-time ministerial career began in December 1838, when he became a traveling Methodist minister.

James Longstreet came to live with the his uncle’s family in Augusta to attend Richmond County Academy. When Augustus’ brother, also named James, died in 1833, he became even more of a father figure to his nephew.

Author, Minister, and College President

In 1835, Longstreet published “Georgia Scenes, Characters, Incidents, Etc, in the First Half Century of the Republic”, a book of humorous sketches which were based on life in the South. Poet Edgar Allan Poe gave it a rave review, and in 1840 the book was re-issued by Harper and Brothers. Longstreet’s goal was (in his words) “to supply a chasm in history which has always been overlooked — the manners, customs, amusements, wit, dialect as they appear in all grades of society to an ear and eye witness of them.”

Longstreet’s brief career as a full-time minister ended when he became president of Emory College in Oxford, Ga. in January 1840. Four years later, he resigned his post to serve briefly as president of Centenary College in Jackson, La. He was president of Ole Miss from 1849 to 1856. After briefly retiring, he was offered the presidency of South Carolina College (later the University of South Carolina) where he served until 1861 when the Civil War began.

Longstreet moved to Oxford, Miss., where his ill wife had been living with one of their daughters. In December 1862, Federal troops reached Oxford and burned his house. The Longstreets relocated to Oxford, Ga., and then to Columbus, Ga. After the war, the Longstreets lived in Oxford, Miss., where Frances died in 1869. Augustus Longstreet died on July 9, 1870 at age 79.

The inscription on the Longstreet family monument is not easy to read so I am thankful to the person who transcribed it for Augustus’ memorial on Find a Grave. Longstreet apparently wrote it not long before he died:

He sleeps by the side of his wife of whom he never thought himself worthy and who never thought herself worthy of her husband. In every innocent movement of his life, she went hand in hand and heart in heart with him for over Fifty-one years. Death was a kind visitor to them both.

A Lingering Mystery

There is a bit of a mysterious footnote that I’m still trying to solve and that is the fate of Augustus Longstreet’s grandson, Augustus Longstreet Branham. Born on Sept. 7, 1847, he was the son of Longstreet’s daughter Frances Eliza Longstreet Branham and Dr. Henry Branham. Augustus Branham died on Sept. 17, 1867 according to the family monument. But how and where did he die?

I truly Googled my heart out on this one but to little avail. Ancestry yielded little beyond census records of his living with his family in Oxford in 1850 and 1860. But he vanishes after that. However, I did find a curious paragraph in the church history of England’s Nutfield Parish Church, the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, located south of London. It says:

Opposite, on the North wall, is a fascinating alcove behind a brass memorial plate, the ‘ghost cupboard’!  Was it the Easter sepulchre, or simply a cupboard, in the days before vestries were thought of?  The poignant memorial is to a young American lad, Augustus Longstreet Branham, who died on his way home to New York after a visit to this country. There is a Hall of Residence named after him in Oxford, Miss.

This was puzzling indeed because I could find no Branham Hall listed on the Ole Miss web site. What is the New York connection? Did Branham spend time in England? If anyone reading this knows, please contact me as I’d love to know what happened to him.

More to come next time in Part III!

We made it into Mississippi and headed for Oxford, home of the University of Mississippi. It’s better known as Old Miss. Sunset was fast approaching and I hoped to get to Oxford Memorial Cemetery before I ran out of light.

Just a logistical note. The city of Oxford owns Old Oxford, St. Peter’s, and Oxford Memorial Cemetery. I’m going to refer to it as Oxford Memorial Cemetery for clarity. There are no true dividing lines between the sections other than perhaps the age of some of the tombstones, The entire cemetery is technically owned by the city under the umbrella of Oxford Memorial Cemetery. Find a Grave has about 5,600 recorded memorials online.

The first person I went looking for is buried very close to the road on a hillside under some lovely shade. His name is so woven into Mississippi’s history that there was no way I was missing a stop at his grave, located in the St. Peter’s section.

A Nobel Laureate’s Grave

Confession time. I’m not a fan of William Faulkner’s writing. I offer my humble apologies to those of you who may be from Mississippi and/or are huge fans of his. I was assigned to read the novel Absalom, Absalom! in college and barely made it through. He’s just not my cup of tea. But I know he is beloved by many and his work is greatly treasured in literary circles. People travel from afar to Oxford just to visit his grave for good reason.

A native New Albany, Miss., Faulkner’s family moved to Oxford when he was young. When World War I began, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force but did not serve in combat. Returning to Oxford, he attended Ole Miss for three semesters before dropping out. He moved to New Orleans, where he wrote his first novel Soldiers’ Pay in 1925. Returning to Oxford, he wrote Sartoris in 1927, his first work set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County.

In 1929, Faulkner married Estelle Oldham, who brought with her two children from her previous marriage. Faulkner and Estelle later had a daughter, Jill, in 1933. In 1929, he published The Sound and the Fury and the following year, wrote As I Lay Dying. Hoping for greater economic success, he went to Hollywood to work as a screenwriter.

Faulkner’s fame reached its peak upon publication of Malcolm Cowley’s The Portable Faulkner and his being awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in literature. He is the only Mississippi-born Nobel laureate. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and his last novel The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Faulkner’s economic success enabled him to purchase Rowan Oak, an estate in Oxford. He died from a heart attack on July 6, 1962, following a fall from his horse the prior month. Estelle and their daughter, Jill, lived at Rowan Oak until Estelle’s death in 1972.

One of Estelle’s children from her first marriage to Cornell Franklin, Malcolm Argyle Franklin (1923-1977), is buried in the plot with them.

Ole Miss literature students have a tradition of gathering at Faulkner’s grave to toast the Deep South’s foremost author. But no empty whiskey bottles were littering his grave on the day we stopped by.

“Her White Children Bless Her”

Further into the cemetery, I found the grave of Caroline “Callie” Barr Clark (1840-1940). Born into slavery, Callie started working for William Faulkner’s mother, Maud, in 1902. In later years, Callie lived in a cottage behind William Faulkner’s home in Oxford. She died there at the age of 100 in 1940. Both Faulkner and his brother, John, wrote affectionately of her.

Callie’s relationship with the Faulkner family might be viewed by many today as paternalistic, but I don’t doubt that their love for her was real. Over the years, Callie shared stories of pre-Civil War and Reconstruction times from her own memories with the Faulkner children. William conducted her funeral in Rowan Oak’s living room, and arranged for her burial and grave marker.

Callie is thought to be the inspiration for the character of Dilsey Gibson in The Sound and the Fury, Cal’line Nelson in Soldier’s Pay, and Molly Beauchamp in Go Down, Moses.

Faulkner dedicated Go Down, Moses to Callie in 1942, saying:

“To MAMMY Mississippi [1840-1940] who was born in slavery and gave to my family fidelity without stint or calculation of recompense and to my childhood an immeasurable devotion and love.”

A Rose By Any Other Name

Not far from Callie’s grave you can see the large Falkner family plot dominated by a large obelisk. You’ll notice the slightly different spelling of the name. There’s a rather complicated story there.

I’ve read that the family actually spelled it “Faulkner” many years before but Faulkner’s great-grandfather dropped the “u” so it became “Falkner”. William started spelling his last name “Faulkner” sometime after 1924. His brother John changed his last name to Faulkner when he published his own first novel “Men Working”. Brother Murry kept his as “Falkner” and brother Dean (who died in a 1936 plane crash) has the last name “Falkner” on his grave marker.

The obelisk in the center of the plot is for William Faulkner’s grandparents, John Wesley Thompson Falkner (1848-1922) and Sallie McAlpine Murry Falkner (1850-1906). It’s quite something to see up close, with images of John and Sallie’s profiles carved into it.

I didn’t find much about John and Sallie because apparently great-grandfather Col. William Clark Falkner was a much more colorful character who grabs the spotlight. But because he’s buried in Ripley Cemetery elsewhere in Mississippi, I’m not going to go into his background. I do know that John Falkner is thought to be the model for Bayard Sartoris in the Yoknapatawpha novels.

John Falkner was also the first president of the First National Bank of Oxford, now known as FNB Oxford-Tupelo. According to a 2020 Facebook post from the bank, John Falkner’s desk was located in the middle of the lobby so he could observe all business being conducted. William Faulkner learned of his great-grandfather’s many exploits from his grandfather over the years.

Faulkner’s parents are also buried in the Falkner plot. That’s his father, Murry, on the far right.

William Faulkner’s parents were Murry Cuthbert Falkner (1870-1932) and Maud Butler Falkner (1871-1960). Murry worked for the family-owned railroad of which the president had been his grandfather, Col. Falkner. It was when Murry and Maud were living in New Albany in 1897 that William was born. Shortly after, the family moved back to Ripley, where sons John and Murry were born. When the railroad was sold, Murry and his family moved to Oxford, where fourth son, Dean, was born. In Oxford, Murry Falkner (the father) was at one time the business manager of Ole Miss.

Alabama Faulkner

There’s one Faulkner that I wanted to mention that I didn’t even know about until I started working on this post this week.

William and Estelle Faulkner had their first child on Jan. 11, 1931 and named her Alabama. Born two months premature, the baby couldn’t consume any type of milk available in that day, including breast milk, cow’s milk, goat’s milk, or powdered milk. Formula didn’t exist then.

While incubators were a brand new feature at Memphis, Tenn. hospitals, they weren’t available at Oxford hospitals. William and his brother, Dean, raced to Memphis to obtain an incubator for Alabama, but returned home that evening to see her continue to fade. Little Alabama passed died the following day on January 20, 1931.

Alabama is buried in the Falkner plot. I wish I had a better picture of her grave but this is all I have. Her grave, which does not bear her name, rests in the shadow of her great-grandparents’ obelisk.

I’ll have more stories from Oxford Memorial Cemetery next time in Part II.

I’m wrapping up my visit to Birmingham, Ala.’s Oak Hill Cemetery this week. I’m sure there are many stories I’ve missed but all good things must come to an end.

This week, I came across the story of two brothers, both doctors, whose lives each came to a sudden end but several years apart. It wasn’t until I started pulling up obituaries that it came to light. Then there’s the Birmingham undertaker whose early years were rather colorful.

Tale of Two (Medical) Brothers

The story starts with Dr. Elias Davis and his wife, Rhoda Georgia Anne (seen sometimes as Georginna) Latham. I don’t know where Elias studied medicine but apparently his father was also a doctor. The couple were married on Sept. 24, 1857 in Jefferson County, Ala. Their first child was John Daniel Sinkler Davis, born on Jan. 19, 1859 in Trussville, Ala. Son William Elias Brownlee Davis came into the world on Nov. 25, 1863.

Sadly, the boys would not know their father for long. Dr. Davis enlisted in the Confederate Army on June 4, 1861. The list of engagements he was present at is quite long and he was eventually promoted all the way from private to first lieutenant.

The back of the monument for Elias and Georgia Anne states that “Dr. Elias was killed on Aug. 21, 1864 while commanding sharpshooters of the Tenth Alabama Regiment and is buried in Petersburg, Va.” So he’s not actually buried at Oak Hill. After Georgia Anne died on Nov. 22, 1899, she was buried there beside their shared monument.

Both John and William pursued medical degrees, like their father and paternal grandfather before them. Tutors and a year of school in Montevallo, Ala. provided John with his pre-med education. He graduated from the Medical College of Georgia (Augusta) in 1879 and came home to Alabama to set up a rural private practice.

William earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Alabama, was briefly a school teacher then studied medicine at Vanderbilt University and the University of Louisville. He graduated from Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York City in 1884.

Soon after, William joined his brother in his new Birmingham practice and the siblings began two decades of medical achievements involving clinical work, research, and education. One of their earliest projects was a professional journal: the Alabama Medical and Surgical Journal, first published in July 1886.

The Davis & Davis Private Infirmary

Using the Holmes Sanitarium for Diseases of Women in Rome, Ga. as a model, the brothers opened the Davis & Davis Private Infirmary for female diseases and surgical cases in 1894. That same year, the Davis brothers were two of nine physicians who founded the Birmingham Medical College, which opened on October 1.

John was married on July 15, 1897, to Birmingham author Margaret Elizabeth O’Brien. She died on April 1, 1898 at the age of 27 following an operation. He never remarried. On August 12, 1897, William married local schoolteacher Gertrude Mustin. The couple had two daughters, Margaret and Mary.

In 1902, the infirmary moved to a new four-story building. John taught surgery while William taught gynecology and abdominal surgery. The school’s financing was dependent on student fees, which were never enough to develop its resources compared to state-supported medical schools. Despite improvements in facilities and changes in governance, the Birmingham Medical College graduated its final class in May 1915.

Tragically, William was killed in an accident at a railroad crossing in Birmingham on February 24, 1903. He was only 39. Sculptor Giuseppe Moretti was commissioned to create a large bronze statue of Davis, which stands today on the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Medicine campus in front of the former Hillman Hospital buildings on 20th Street.

In July 1903, when Hillman Hospital opened, John Davis and surgeon Lewis Morris provided funds needed to furnish the two operating rooms. John served as president of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama (MASA) in 1928. Davis was among many people suggesting a state-supported four-year medical school, which finally opened in Birmingham in September 1946. It is now the UAB School of Medicine.

Another Tragic Accident

Sadly, John was struck by a cab while crossing the street, sustaining a broken arm, broken leg, and internal injuries. He died two weeks later on May 16, 1931 at the age of 72. He is buried with his wife, Margaret, at Oak Hill Cemetery near his parents and brother.

William’s wife, Gertrude, never remarried. She raised their daughters and watched them marry. She died at age 79 on June 8, 1953. Her marker, which is at the base of William’s grand monument, is so small and worn that I didn’t even notice it when I was there.

The Colorful Undertaker

If you are like me and got a glimpse of the Erswell vault at Oak Hill, you’d think quite an esteemed family was interred within. You would be right. But as I uncovered the story of the Erswells, let’s just say things got interesting (and sad) pretty quickly.

So who was Edward E. Erswell? Many things, it appears. A native of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Erswell was the son of British parents Charles Erswell and Mary Snow Erswell. He grew up in Cleveland before entering Baldwin University in Berea, Ohio but only for six months. He joined a wagon train crossing the plains, making it as far as central Nebraska before sickness forced him to return east. He pursued a variety of activities over the next several years, including stock trading, book sales, patent medicines, and some time at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. He also learned the cabinet making trade along the way.

I wonder if Erswell’s future clients in Birmingham knew that for a time, he worked as the assistant of a magician in Baltimore, Md. called “Professor Collins.” But the true eyebrow raiser for me was the notation that Erswell somehow acquired (with the supposed permission of the U.S. government) a party of Native Americans that he took to state fairs throughout the South.

While in Kansas, Edward married Catherine “Kitty” Smith in 1872 and the couple settled in Birmingham, perhaps he had visited during his state fair tour. He returned to the cabinet-making trade and during cholera/yellow fever outbreaks, he concentrated on making caskets due to the demand. He continued to sell them along with other furniture. It wasn’t until the 1880s that he became a full-time undertaker, which he advertised in the April 17, 1889 edition of The Evening News, a Birmingham newspaper.

No Children Survived

Edward and Kitty had five children over the course of their marriage, but none lived past the age of 30. The first to enter the Oak Hill vault was their third child, Eddie. Only six, Eddie was playing at his father’s furniture store when he took a fatal fall on Sept. 4, 1885.

The year 1900 brought two deaths to Edward and Kitty. Their son, George, born in 1886, died at age 13 on April 9, 1900 of an undisclosed illness. Only two months later, son Henry, 17, was recovering from a second bout of pneumonia when he committed suicide on June 21, 1900 in his room above his father’s business. Some of his friends said he was upset after being rejected by a young lady.

Nellie, Edward and Kitty’s second child, was born in 1876. The newspapers reported her marriage to Samuel Kirkman on March 22, 1893. The marriage was without her parents’ blessing and she was only 17 at the time. However, the newspapers reported all was forgiven and Samuel assisted Edward in his business. Nellie gave birth to daughter Aileen (“Chuggy”) Kirkman Larkin in 1895, who lived a long life. Nellie died in a sanitarium in Savannah, Ga. of tuberculosis on Nov. 30, 1903. I’m not sure what became of Samuel after her death.

Maude, the first Erswell child, was born in 1874 and died last. She attended the Birmingham Business College in 1897. On July 16, 1901, with her parents’ blessing, she married mining engineer Henry Geismer. The couple settled in Pratt City and welcomed a son, Henry, on May 7, 1902. The boy died two months later. Sometime in January 1904, Maude had her appendix removed. She never quite recovered and passed away at the age of 30 on March 21, 1904.

Opening Woodland Cemetery

Despite the deaths of his children, Edward carried on. He moved up in the ranks of the local lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF), eventually attaining the rank of grand treasurer of the grand encampment of Birmingham. He ran for coroner in 1891, although I don’t know if he won. He also established Woodlawn Cemetery (now known as Greenwood Cemetery) sometime in the late 1880s. It is located next to the Birmingham airport but at the time of its inception, this was a rural area.

From what I can tell, the cemetery got off to a good start but suffered financial difficulties even when Edward was still alive. It would become a predominantly African-American cemetery in later years. Three of the four young ladies (Addie Mae Collins, Carol Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley) killed in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham on Sept. 15, 1963 are buried there. For a time, Greenwood was in a very neglected state in the 1990s but from what I can tell, is now being taken care of with help from the city.

Edward died on Jan. 28, 1910 at age 63 after a long illness. His funeral and burial at Oak Hill was held with much ceremony, with all the highest funeral rites of the IOOF and many of his fellow lodge brothers in attendance.

Kitty died on Sept. 29, 1930 at age 76. It is rumored that she never wanted the family be interred at Oak Hill but preferred to be at Elmwood Cemetery because it was more fashionable. Some say you can hear whispers and muttering coming out of the vault late at night because Kitty is still complaining about it to Edward.

A Fine Farewell

Sarah and I enjoyed exploring Oak Hill Cemetery. But it was time to get back on the road and head toward Mississippi before dark. I hope you’ll join me on our next stop on the 2019 Oklahoma Road Trip.