Holmes County Has Moved to a New Location.....

Beginning today, you may read posts previously found here at my new location, Cemeteries of Dancing Rabbit Creek.

On the new blog, I will continue posting photos and writing stories about cemeteries located in Holmes County, as well as Attala County and Madison County. I will also be posting photos and stories about cemeteries and those buried in them, in the counties formed after The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was signed with the Choctaw Nation in 1832.

I would like for this new blog to become an interactive blog, one where I can post your pictures and the family stories they tell. Please contact me if you have anything you would like to submit for publication.

Tombstone Tuesday - Cade-Smith Cemetery

This weathered and unusual grave stone marks the graves of Louisa J. Watson Cade and her second husband, W. R. Cade. Louisa, who are buried in Cade-Smith Cemetery located near Emory, Mississippi. The arch connecting the two columns is imbellished with what appears to be a cluster of grapes and a horn of plenty, and the names of Mr. and Mrs. Cade are inscribed on the bases that support the columns. According to the inscriptions, Louisa Cade was born on August 20, 1839 and died on January 27, 1905. W. R. Cade was born on December 12, 1825, and he died on February 1, 1875. The cemetery contains other Cade family members, along with several members of the Hampton, Pollard, and Smith families.

New Rabbit in Town

This is to announce that my new blog, The Graveyard Rabbit of Dancing Rabbit Creek, is now online. I hope you will visit me there, where I plan to write about cemeteries located in the counties that were formed from lands ceded by the Choctaw Nation in The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek.

Tombstone Tuesday - Elmira N. Thomas

I wrote a post here over the weekend about W. S. Thomas and his Woodmen of the World gravestone. This stone marks the grave of Elmira Thomas, his wife, who is buried next to her husband in the Ebenezer Baptist Church Cemetery. Since I have never observed a gravestone provided for the wife of a member, it must be that membership in the association provided a gravestone for only the head of the household.







Elmira N. Thomas
Wife of W. S. Thomas
Born Sept. 18, 1843
Died Apr. 6, 1913

W. S. Thomas, Woodmen of the World Member

The grave of W. S. Thomas in Ebenezer Baptist Church Cemetery, Ebenezer, Mississippi, is marked with a Woodmen of the World monument, similar to the one marking the grave of my own great-grandfather, Edward Arthur Branch, who died in 1914 and is buried in New Hope Cemetery in Madison County. My great-grandfather's marker was the subject of a post that I wrote on The Graveyard Rabbit of Attala County blog several months ago. According to the information on the scroll that is part of his gravestone in the cemetery in Ebenezer, W. S. Thomas was born on January 14, 1850, and his date of death was November 18, 1917.

Just like my great-grandfather, W. S. Thomas must have been a member of the organization known as "Woodmen of the World," founded in Omaha, Nebraska in 1890 by Joseph Cullen Root. According to "Wikipedia," the organization's purpose was to help its members "clear away problems of financial security....," and one of the benefits of membership was that free tombstones were provided by the organization for its members. The tombstone of W. S. Thomas and Edward A. Branch, along with others that mark the grave sites of deceased woodmen throughout Mississippi and across the United States, are reminders of those who lived and worked, and sometimes died, while working in the timber industry. The use of these tombstones, shaped like stumps of wood that bore the Woodmen of the World logo, was discontinued by the organization sometime around 1920.

Ornate Carvings on Gravestone of Lula Ann Garnett

The intricate carvings on the beautiful marble gravestone of Lula Anne Garrett are not only lovely to behold, but the flowers, the dove, and the sea shell are all symbolic of the love and devotion her husband and her family wanted to immortalize with this stone. Lula Anne, born in 1832, and the wife of Warren Henry Garnett, died in 1900. Her grave, along with the grave of her husband, are located in Franklin Cemetery.

Tombstone Tuesday - Grave of Nancy Ambrose

This tombstone, bearing the inscription "Erected by the children to mark the place of the remains of their Mother," marks the grave of Nancy Ambrose, a native of Onslow County, North Carolina. Mrs. Ambrose died in Holmes County, Mississippi, on November 27, 1852, and is buried in Franklin Cemetery. She was 64 years old at the time of her death.