All good things must come to and end. Today starts the beginning of the end of the Oklahoma 2019 Road Trip.

When I looked back this week, I was surprised to see that this series began on May 26, 2022. It took me a little over a year to write about what we encountered over a seven-day period (May 22-May 28, 2019). That’s a bit mind blowing! In all, we stopped by 14 cemeteries in six states (Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana).

Our last stop on the Oklahoma Road Trip 2019 was Selma’s Ala.’s Live Oak Cemetery. It’s about an hour and 45 minutes east of Meridian, Miss. After that, we would head back to Atlanta where Sarah was going to drop me off at the airport so I could catch a flight to join my family in Folly Beach, S.C.

Founded in 1829, Old Live Oak Cemetery was expanded in 1877. The newer portion is sometimes called New Live Oak Cemetery and the cemetery is collectively known as Live Oak Cemetery. We were on a tight time schedule so we decided to focus on Old Live Oak. As a result, there are some well-known graves I did not photograph because I simply didn’t have time to look for them and it was very hot outside.

Jeff Davis Chair Stolen and Recovered

As you can imagine, there are several Confederate graves and monuments at Old Live Oak. There’s a monument to controversial Confederate Lt. General Nathan Bedford Forrest (who is not buried there), a large Confederate monument, a Jefferson Davis chair, and two mass graves of Confederate soldiers (similar to the burial mound at Meridian, Miss.’s Rose Hill Cemetery). The mass graves combined hold the remains of about 156 soldiers that were later moved from other burial sites to Old Live Oak Cemetery.

I thought I’d share the story of the Jefferson Davis chair for its novelty and because it made headlines in 2021, after I’d photographed it.

The 500-lb. limestone chair was donated by the Ladies of Selma in May of 1893 as a way of honoring the president of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis Davis for his previous visits to Selma in 1863 and 1871. You can see the words “Here We Rest” on it.

I didn’t photograph the chair because I’m a fan of Jefferson Davis (or the Confederacy). But the style of this chair caught my eye for other reasons. The wood themes and fern accents reminded me of other chairs I have seen in cemeteries with no connection to the Confederacy whatsoever. The 1893 date fits right in with the Arts & Craft movement in which this style thrived. The Woodmen of the World (WOW) tree-shaped grave monuments were also starting to appear in cemeteries across America.

Months after we saw it, the Jefferson Davis chair was stolen. On March 20, 2021 the Selma chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) reported to local police that the carved limestone monument shaped like a chair was missing.

It was eventually recovered intact a few weeks later in New Orleans, La. and returned to the Selma UDC. Three people were arrested and charged by New Orleans police for illegal possession of an item valued at more than $1,000. I was unable to find out the resolution of their cases. I don’t know if the UDC decided to keep the chair under wraps or returned it to Old Live Oak Cemetery.

Tomb of a Vice President

One of the reasons I wanted to visit Old Live Oak was to see the mausoleum of U.S. Vice President William Rufus Devane King. Never heard of him? Neither had I.

King’s main distinction is for holding the record as the shortest term of office for any U.S. vice president, having held the position for almost five weeks. He never presided over any legislative session as vice president.

Born in Sampson County, N.C. to William King and Margaret Devane King, his family was wealthy and well-connected. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1803. Admitted to the bar in 1806 after reading the law with judge William Duffy of Fayetteville, N.C., he began practice in Clinton, N.C. He was elected to the North Carolina House of Commons and then the U.S. House of Representatives.

After serving in diplomatic posts overseas, King followed his brother, Thomas Devane King, to the Alabama territory in 1818. King bought 750 acres of land on the Alabama River in Dallas County where he built a plantation named Chestnut Hill that operated mainly on slave labor.

After Alabama became a state in 1819, King helped draft the state’s constitution. He was then elected to the U.S. Senate, serving four terms representing Alabama. King served as president pro tempore of the Senate from 1836-1841 before being appointed by President John Tyler as U.S. Minister to France. He came back to the Senate upon his return, serving until 1852.

In 1852, Alabama Democrats made a big effort for King to be nominated for the vice presidency on the same ticket as New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce. It came at a bad time for King, who was suffering from tuberculosis. He traveled to Cuba in an effort to regain his health. Unable to return to Washington, D.C. to take the oath of office, King received special Congressional permission to take his oath outside the U.S. He was sworn in as America’s 13th vice president on March 24, 1853.

King returned to Chestnut Hill where he died one day later on April 18, 1853 at age 67. He was buried there first. In 1882, Selma built a mausoleum for him and his remains were re-interred at Old Live Oak Cemetery.

If you look to the bottom right of the inscription over the door of King’s mausoleum, you can glimpse the name of J.T. Allen. Born in 1814, Josiah Tingley “J.T.” Allen hailed from Attleboro, Mass. but moved to Cahaba, Ala. where he married Barbara Somers in 1839. He owned and operated Cahaba Marble Works.

Because Allen died in November 1855, I don’t think Allen himself was involved in the creation of the King mausoleum. However, it could be that the stone with the inscription bearing his name was taken from the stone of King’s original grave. Or the mausoleum was produced by whomever took over Allen’s firm after he died. Census records don’t indicate any of his sons were stone carvers, but perhaps one of them was.

On Sept. 23, 2022, the King mausoleum was defaced when someone poured black paint on it. Fortunately, the damage was not difficult to remove. I don’t think the culprits were ever caught.

Waxahatchee Train Accident

Sometimes a monument can share an event that history has forgotten. That’s the case of the monument to judge William McKendree Byrd.

Born in Perry County, Miss., Byrd attended Mississippi College and later graduated from LaGrange College in 1838. After reading law in Holly Springs, Miss., he moved to Alabama and was admitted to the bar in 1841. He began practicing law in Linden and was elected in 1851 to represent Marengo County in the state legislature. Two years later, he moved to Selma to continue his law practice.

Byrd’s judicial career began in 1863, when he was elected chancellor of the middle division of Alabama. Two years later, the legislature elected him associate justice of the Supreme Court, and he assumed
the office on Jan. 2, 1866. He was removed from that post in 1868 as a result of Reconstruction legislation passed by Congress. Byrd then returned to Selma to practice law. He wed Mariah H. Massie, of Tennessee.

In the early hours of Sept. 24, 1874, Byrd was traveling home to Selma on the Selma, Rome, and Dalton Railroad near Columbiana, Ala. when the train plunged through the Waxahatchie (also spelled Waxahachee and Waxahatchee) bridge. He and three members of the train’s crew were killed. While many were injured, the rest of the passengers and crew survived. Judge Byrd was 56 at the time of his death.

“With Large Brain and Iron Will…”

The only information I could find about the train accident was from newspaper reports. Some surmised that because the bridge was of fairly new construction, it had been tampered with. But no reasons as to why it would have been were given.

I did not get a good photo of the other inscription on Judge Byrd’s monument but the one on Find a Grave got my attention. I can’t say I’ve ever seen the words “large brain” in an epitaph before. It reads:

A genuine Saxon, he was. Always faithful to his people. A just judge. And an honest man. A loving husband and a father kind, yet just he governed his household with large brain and iron will, he was a rule of men. A humble Christian, he feared God, and only Him.

Judge Byrd’s wife, Maria, lived on for another 20 years. After she died in 1907, she was buried beside him at Old Live Oak.

“Enshrined in Their Hearts”

The grave of John Mitchell Purnell is not close to Judge Byrd’s monument, but they are connected. Judge Byrd’s daughter, Martha Elizabeth Byrd, married Purnell on April 20, 1859 in Dallas County, Alabama. She was 21 at the time, Purnell was also 21.

Born in 1838, Purnell was the son of Dr. John Robbins Purnell and Mary Mitchell Purnell. Dr. Purnell had died in 1854. John and Martha lived with Mary. Martha gave birth to a daughter, Mattie, on June 6, 1860.

For reasons unknown, John died on April 11, 1861 at age 23. Martha gave birth to their son, Jean, on Dec. 10, 1861. He died at age four on August 11, 1866. Martha remarried to Thomas Henry Price in 1872. She died in 1914 and is buried in Magnolia Cemetery in Mobile, Ala. Her daughter, Mattie, married Franklin Glass in 1884. She died in 1933 and is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Montgomery, Ala.

I’ll have more stories from Selma’s Old Live Oak Cemetery soon.