Welcome back to Old Live Oak Cemetery! If you’re hoping to find lots of Spanish moss (which isn’t really a moss at all or from Spain) and some beautiful monuments, this is the place you want to visit.
Last week, I shared with you the final resting place of U.S. Vice President William Rufus Devane King, who only served in that capacity for six weeks before his death in 1853. There’s a resident of Old Live Oak that also has presidential ties.
Sister-in-Law to a President
Born in Lexington, Ky. in 1840, Elodie Breck Todd was the daughter of Robert S. Todd and Elizabeth L. Humphreys. Elodie was the half sister of Mary Todd Lincoln and half sister-in-law of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. In 1862, Elodie became the third wife of Nathaniel Henry Rhodes Dawson.
A native of Charleston, S.C., Dawson moved to Selma after his second marriage to Mary Tarver. She died in 1860. Dawson was also a member of the Alabama legislature and served as speaker of the house. Many of the magnolia and live oak trees in Old Live Oak Cemetery are ones Dawson obtained from Mobile in 1879.
Two of Elodie’s brothers died while serving in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Capt. Samuel Todd was killed at the Battle of Shiloh and Capt. Alexander Todd died at the Battle of Baton Rouge.
Elodie and Nathaniel would have three children together. Alex Todd Dawson, born on Jan. 9, 1863, only lived for four days before passing away. Son Henry Rhodes Dawson, born in 1864, died in 1903 at age 39. He never married. Son Lawrence Percy Dawson, born in 1869, died in 1925. I’ll talk about him shortly.
“Death Loves a Shining Mark”
When I read about Elodie’s death on Nov. 14, 1877, all I could learn was that it was sudden and unexpected. Her obituary stated, “Again have we an illustration that death ever loves a shining mark.” She was only 37 when she died.
Nathaniel Dawson was determined to have a monument erected that reflected his love for his wife. So he ordered a monument from Italy. According to a brochure produced by the cemetery, he was not satisfied with the way the resulting monument’s hair looked. Dawson had it sent back and corrected to his satisfaction.
Nathaniel did not remarry after Elodie’s death. He passed away at age 65 in 1895. Son Henry died in 1903 of erysipelas, a bacterial skin infection.
Sadly, youngest son Percy died a violent, senseless death. By 1925, he had achieved the rank of sheriff in the Dallas County police department. Wealthy landowner Deans Weaver was involved in a heated dispute with the Alabama Power Company, who intended to install power lines on his plantation.
On the afternoon of Aug. 27, 1925, Percy and four deputies arrived to escort 12 linemen onto the property, backed by a court order. Weaver suddenly appeared and shot Percy directly in the heart. He was killed instantly. Deputy Hugh Sinclair, who had accompanied Dawson, then shot and killed Weaver.
Percy was laid to rest beside his wife, Alice Kellogg Dawson, who had died in 1913 at age 39. They are both interred in the Dawson plot at Old Live Oak Cemetery with the other Dawsons.
“A Friend to All”
The death of 28-year-old mother Mattie O. Blunt Keith was not exactly a surprise to those who knew her.
Born in Selma in 1858 to Edward Blunt and Mary Orr Blunt, Mattie wed John Moses Keith in 1878. She gave birth to their daughter, Mary, in 1884.
But it wasn’t very long after Mary’s birth that Mattie’s health began to fail. She visited Hurricane Spring, Tenn. but it did not improve her health. She went to visit her sister in Clarksville, Tenn. and died at her home on Aug. 18, 1886.
John Keith remarried to Josie Selden Ruffin in 1895. He died in 1910 at age 62. He is buried at Old Live Oak with Josie, who died in 1915. John and Mattie’s daughter, Mary, never married but became a nurse. She died in 1951 at age 67.
A Brother and Sister
These last two monuments I want to feature are for siblings. They are quite different but equally beautiful.
Martha Rebecca Smith wed Richard Starkey Jones around 1853 in Clarke, Ala. They would have a son, Drury Fair Jones, in 1854 and a daughter, Sarah Ann “Sallie” Jones, in 1856. Richard died in 1858 and Martha remarried to Albert Rixey.
While the cause of death for Drury was not reported, I suspect he died from either yellow or malarial fever. When I found his very brief death notice in an edition of Selma’s Southern Argus, it was surrounded by a few articles on how both diseases were causing deaths in the city at that time. Drury was only 22 when he died on Aug. 22, 1878.
Drury’s monument features an angel leaning on a round medallion with his name on it. It’s rather unusual.
I suspect he was close with his sister because she published an administratrix notice about his estate in the Oct. 28, 1878 edition of the Southern Argus.
Sallie met successful Rome, Ga. attorney Charles Nicholas Featherston sometime in the mid 1880s. A Confederate veteran , Charles was 48 when he asked 34-year-old Sallie to marry him. They were wed on July 9, 1888 in Asheville, N.C.
Some records indicate that three of their children died in infancy. But son Charles Neal Featherston, born in 1891, survived. The marriage was a happy one, it appears. Eventually, Charles retired from practicing law.
In the summer of 1909, Charles and Sallie took an extended trip of the Western states and arrived in Seattle, Wash. to attend the Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition, a type of world’s fair. Charles caught pneumonia and died there on Aug. 29, 1909. He was 69. He is buried at Myrtle Hill Cemetery in Rome, Ga.
Sallie returned to Rome, but she was heartbroken and overcome with grief. She died only four months later on Dec. 11, 1909. Her remains were brought home to Selma where she is interred beside her brother and parents at Old Live Oak Cemetery.
Sallie’s monument is quite unlike that of her brother’s or any other I have seen before. A young woman wearing a simple gown sits, here eyes cast down, with a bouquet of flowers in her lap. I don’t know if it resembles Sallie but I suspect it does.
I didn’t know it until I looked at a photo of the monument’s base on Find a Grave that it was signed. The monument was created by the Muldoon Monument Co. of Louisville, Ky. It’s always a pleasure to encounter a Muldoon monument, which is not very often for me. You can read more about Muldoon in this 2017 post I did including one of his monuments at Augusta, Ga.’s Magnolia Cemetery. Now known as Muldoon Memorials, the company is still in business today.
Sadly, Charles and Sallie’s son, Charles Neal, did not live past his 30s. He died on Nov. 27, 1927 from a heart ailment at age 36. He is buried with his father at Myrtle Hill Cemetery in Rome, Ga.
Heading Home
As we left Selma, Sarah and I talked about what a wonderful time we had experienced on our road trip. When we reflect on it now, we always comment on how good it was that we didn’t wait to do it since less than a year later, Covid would have made the trip impossible for quite a while. We did go on a mini roadtrip to Middle Georgia in November 2020 that you can look forward to reading about, though.
We’re talking about taking another interstate trip in the future, once Sarah is retired. Maybe in New England. We don’t know exactly where yet.
But I think it’ll be hard to top the Oklahoma Roadtrip 2019.