After leaving Jackson’s Greenwood Cemetery, we wearily headed for Meridian to spend the night. That’s about an hour and a half drive. The plan was to get a good night’s sleep, stop at Rose Hill Cemetery in Meridian, see Live Oak Cemetery in Selma, Ala., and then head to Atlanta where she would drop me off at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. I would then join my family at Folly Beach, S.C. to enjoy the last few days of our annual beach vacation with my husband’s family.
The next morning, we headed to Meridian’s Rose Hill Cemetery for our next to last “hop” before driving east to Selma. The oldest recorded marker has a death date of 1853 but as with many old burial grounds, there are likely folk that were interred there earlier. Find a Grave lists about 3,525 memorials for Rose Hill.
The cemetery was being mowed when we arrived. I owe one of the gentleman mowing a debt of gratitude. He saw me wandering around, turned off his mower, and came over to ask if I was looking for someone in particular. I explained my strange hobby and he offered to lead me to a grave worth seeing. A cemetery hopper doesn’t turn down a kindness like that. I’m also sure I wouldn’t have noticed it on my own.
The Competing Founders of Meridian
Buried off to the side with his wife in a humble grave is John T. Ball, born in New York in 1821. He married Virginia native Sarah Elizabeth Page Smith in 1848 and by 1850, they were living in Mississippi.
Ball was keen to get in on the railroad construction going on and so was Alabaman (and lawyer) Lewis A. Ragsdale. Both men sought to make a profit from the planned crossing of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad with the Vicksburg and Montgomery Railroad, but Ragsdale is said to have beat Ball to the area by a few days.
Ragsdale bought area settler Richard McLemore’s farm, east of present-day 27th Avenue. It included much of what would become the central business district. Ball purchased only 80 acres west of 27th Avenue. McLemore and his family moved north out of the city, and Ragsdale moved into McLemore’s log home, turning it into a tavern.
Ragsdale and Ball had differing views on the city name, too. Ball believed the word “meridian” was synonymous to “junction”. He and the more industrial-minded residents preferred that name. Meanwhile, the more agrarian population liked “Sowashee,” which means “mad river” in a Native American language and is the name of a nearby creek. Ragsdale wanted to name the new settlement Ragsdale City after himself. Clearly, Meridian won out. The town was officially incorporated as Meridian on Feb. 10, 1860.
Ball operated a dry goods business and his family remained in Meridian until his death in 1890 at age 69. Sarah died in 1877. The few articles I found about his death were brief and said little beyond the fact he was one of the city’s oldest settlers and considered a founder.
By comparison, Lewis A. Ragsdale has a much larger monument that I photographed before I even knew who he was.
Unlike John T. Ball, Lewis Ragsdale had a lengthy obituary that detailed his life. I won’t go into all those details, but he had his fair share of failures before his success in Meridian. He married Sarah Ann McCoy around 1855 in Mississippi and they had several children, many dying in childhood.
Ragsdale was a prosperous merchant and landowner. Interestingly, his obituary in the Jackson, Miss. Clarion (Dec. 16, 1886) dryly noted, “He was a man of great public spirit, and was very wealthy, notwithstanding his investments in a number of unprofitable projects.” He died on Dec. 10, 1886 in Memphis, Tenn. Wife Sarah died three years later.
“Erected By His Lady Friends“
It’s not every day you pass by a monument that has the words “Erected By His Lady Friends” inscribed on it. But such is the case of Dr. Leonidas Shackelford.
A native of Greensboro, Ala., Lee (as he was called) grew up and married Virginia Newman in 1867, having served as a surgeon in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. I’m not sure where he attended medical school. He and Virginia had three children together: Thomas (who died as a toddler in 1871), Lee, and Mary.
According to what I could find at the time, a yellow fever epidemic hit Meridian in 1878, much like the one that hit Shreveport, La. in 1873. It affected almost 500 residents, leaving at least 86 dead. In fear of the lives of his wife and two children, Dr. Shackelford quickly sent them out of town before a city quarantine was imposed.
Dr. Shackelford died on May 19, 1878 while tending to the sick. His family did not find out about it until they returned to Meridian. Some have said Dr. Shackelford’s marker was already up when the family came home. It is suggested that the inscription was from the nurses with whom he tended the sick, but nobody knows for sure. I have no doubt that had it meant anything but something of that nature, his wife would not have let it remains standing.
Virginia, who outlived her husband by 45 years, did not remarry. She died in 1923 and is buried beside him. Their son, also named Lee, grew up to become a bookkeeper. He married and settled in Meridian, passing away in 1942. Daughter Mary did not wed but shared a home with her mother, brother, and sister-in-law for a time, becoming a teacher. She died in 1954 at age 81. Both Lee and Mary are buried with their parents in the Shackelford plot at Rose Hill.
“None Knew Thee But To Love Thee”
The grave of Janie M. Akin doesn’t tell us much in terms of facts but the symbolism it provides speaks without words. A Heavenly hand reaches down from the clouds and grasps three flowers, signifying a young life taken too soon from the mortal world.
I could find very little about Janie McCormick, who married Meridian resident Charles Vivian Akin on July 3, 1889. She would have been 23 and Charles 29. Janie gave birth to a son, Charles Jr., on May 23, 1890. For reasons unknown, she died on Sept. 6, 1891. Below her birth and death dates are inscribed the words, “None Knew Thee But To Love Thee.”
Charles, who owned a local dry goods store, remarried to Alice Trudchen Hyer in 1893. The couple had two daughters, Gladys and Lois. Alice died on Dec. 31, 1900 at age 29. Charles died at age 66 in 1927. They are both buried at Rose Hill Cemetery.
In Part 2, I’ll share the story of the Gyspy Queen buried at Rose Hill and the Confederate burial mound containing the remains of over 100 soldiers.