To be honest, I hadn’t planned to do a Part II on this cemetery. I thought I’d covered all the bases there in Part I.

Then I found a story about two of County Line Christian Church Cemetery’s burials that got my attention. I felt it was important enough to dig into what happened because (sadly) this kind of thing is not as unusual as you might think. In fact, it will come up again in the next cemetery we visited.

You might remember back in 2016, I wrote about Wyuka Cemetery in Lincoln, Neb. Charles Starkweather, a spree killer who murdered 11 people with his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate between January 21 and 29 in 1958, is buried there. He was executed in the electric chair in 1959. At the time, I was stunned to learn that five of Starkweather’s victims are also buried there. In fact, his grave is quite close to three of them. With Wyuka being so big, that surprised me.

As it turns out, both a man who committed a murder and his victim are buried at CLCC Cemetery. I stumbled upon the story quite by accident.

The Short Life of Charlie E. Coggin

I must note that sometimes Charlie’s last name appears as Coggin, Coggins and even Goggins in some newspaper reports I found.

The son of farmer Augustus Abraham “A.A.” Coggin and Henrietta Lona Daniell Coggin-Banks, Charlie was born on Sept. 30, 1892 in Griffin, Ga. That’s not far from Brooks. He fell in the middle of the birth order of the Coggin family.

A.A. died in May 1917 as World War I loomed on the horizon. Charlie enlisted in the U.S. Army on Sept. 18, 1917. His draft card indicates he was disabled. Despite that, Charlie was assigned to the 122nd Infantry, Company F. He did not serve overseas, largely because of his poor health. He was honorably discharged on Oct. 14, 1918. Oddly enough, his service record indicates he was “37.5 disabled”.

About a year later, Charlie married Mattie Mae Smith. They had one son, Thomas Elliott “Eddie” Coggin.

Murder or Self Defense?

I’ve read several articles about what took place on Oct. 22, 1921. There are some differences of opinion on when who did what to whom. Both Charlie Coggin and a man named Grover Ison, 26, were in a store in nearby Senoia. Like Charlie, Ison was a World War I veteran but he actually served overseas with the American Expeditionary Force in France.

One indisputable fact is that Ison shot and killed Charlie. Some said he did it because Charlie hit him with a baseball bat and Grover responded in self defense. Others said Charlie had asked Grover (alleged to be drinking and cussing in the store) to stop using inappropriate language in front of his family, and Grover had shot him in response. Some alleged that a brother-in-law of Charlie had hit Grover with the baseball bat AFTER he’d shot Charlie.

Grover Ison went on trial in the Spalding County Superior Court the following month and despite his pleas of self defense, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. He got a new trial but was convicted again in February 1923 and began serving his sentence in August 1923. Then in December 1929, he was denied clemency by the state prison board.

In the meantime, Charlie was buried at CLCC Cemetery. His marker notes that he served in the Co. 10 Development Battalion. I saw no reference to this in his service records.

Charlie’s wife, Mattie, remarried to Sam Gosa in 1923. They had 10 children together. They lived in Spalding County for many years. Mattie died in 1968 and is buried in Marietta National Cemetery with Sam, who died in 1958.

Buried in the Same Cemetery

In March 1930, Grover Ison was paroled and returned to Brooks. He married Inez Malone on April 1, 1930. I am guessing he knew her before he went to prison. They had a son and daughter together. According to the 1950 U.S. Census, he was operating a pulpwood business in Spalding County. He died on May 1, 1953 at the age of 60. Inez died in 1966 at age 70. Both are buried in the CLCC Cemetery. I did not get a picture of their graves.

I don’t know how close Charlie’s grave is to Grover’s grave. The area around Brooks where the Isons and Coggins families lived is not heavily populated. Everybody knew everybody. I cannot imagine coming face to face in a store with the man who had shot and killed my husband. Or in a church. Or at an event. But it’s likely that this happened.

Charlie and Mattie’s son, Eddie, grew up and worked in a mill in Griffin. He married and moved to Magee, Miss. During World War II, he served with distinction and received the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. He died on Sept. 19, 2005 and is buried with his wife, Leola, in Magee Cemetery in Mississippi.

Part of me wonders if Mattie ever took Eddie to visit Charlie’s grave and if he asked his mother what happened. Did she point over to where his father’s killer was buried? The thought of it saddens me.

What Happened to Christia?

I’m sharing this last story as an example of something I call “the mystery surviving spouse”. You can find one of these in almost every decent-sized cemetery. A grave marker in which the name and dates of the deceased is on one side, and the name and birth day of the spouse is beside it. Only there is no death date on it.

There are many reasons for this. Sometimes the surviving spouse marries someone else and ends up buried elsewhere with that person, sharing their monument. Sometimes the surviving spouse doesn’t remarry but ends up buried in a different cemetery. More often than not, the surviving spouse doesn’t remarry, dies, but nobody bothers to get their side of the monument engraved. As a result, there’s a mystery.

In the case of Christia Ann Scott Chappell, I tried to find out what happened to her with little success.

Christia was the second wife of William “Henry” Chappell, whose first wife Jane died on New Year’s Eve 1900 at age 38. She and Henry had five daughters together. She is buried in Banks Cemetery in Fayetteville.

Henry remarried to Christia Odell on May 4, 1902. She was 38 and Henry was 41. They had one son, Roy, the following year.

By the time of the 1910 U.S. Census, only one of Henry’s daughters, Ethel, was still living at home. Henry died on Nov. 21, 1921 at age 60. His obituary mentions him having a wife (no name) and the names of his five daughters. Roy is not mentioned. Henry was buried in the CLCC Cemetery. Three of his daughters are also buried there.

Christia lived with son Roy and his family in Newnan, (he married Janie Whatley in 1924), through 1940. After that, she disappears. She does not appear on the 1950 U.S. Census as living with him. I could find no death record or obituary for her. Roy died in 1961 and is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Newnan.

It’s quite possible that Christia is buried beside Henry. But if that’s the case, why was her death date never engraved on their shared marker? I have no idea. It’s sad to think that nobody cared enough to add it. But it happens often.

Lunch!

By this time, Mom and I had earned a much deserved lunch at our favorite pizza place in Fayetteville, Partner’s Pizza. Cemetery hopping can get quite tiring and we needed to refuel.

Next time, I’ll be visiting the last stop on our Fayette County hop at Ebenezer United Methodist Church Cemetery. I’ve got a few interesting stories just waiting to be told.