FUTURE PLANS for Garden Point Cemetery
Shirley Mathey, Historian
Last years’ 2007 Memorial Day program was spectacular. It was incredible that someone felt it important to leave a mark though the family has been gone more than 50 years from this rural area. Mrs Clara Lee Sisco Hill honored her brother with a remarkable granite memorial, who not had the hero recognition he truly deserved.
As historian for this small cemetery, my creative mind scours for things to do to find and record the history of this river / lumber / farm community. In 1996, when I started this Garden Point cemetery project, there were no records. When I found a relative after searching through a listing of cemetery records, I decided to become a historian for Garden Point came from working on my several family trees. I visualized someone years down the road finding their relatives as I did.
It my desire to work on collecting family data during the two year wait for the 1940 Census. At that point, I would hope to print limited numbers of Little River Township Families and the Census Records and sell them at a reasonable price. I have collected around 50 family trees from this voting district. These are not complete and will require further collaboration. I am soliciting correct family information info from you. It will be a unique book illustrating some (not all) of the family trees of the settler families. I will move forward with the project.
Written May 2008
HIGHER GROUND
written 1998 by Shirley Heard Brackett, now Mathey.
Published in The Delta Review.
In the early days before the roads, bridges and levees as we know them were
built, water stood for long periods of time. There was a dob of high ground
at the intersection of Arkansas Hwy 140 and 136 in southwest Mississippi County
where early settlers buried their dead. This higher ground was named Garden
Point, but the surrounding community was known in the census records as Little
River Township. The town name applied for a post office at the turn of the century
was Jackson’s Island however this pioneer family name was rejected. Etowah,
a Cherokee name meaning “Muddy Waters,” was chosen arbitrarily by the government.
The Indians were here many years before other settlers.
We don’t know the name of the first person who is buried at Garden Point, but
the first marker is Aug 27, 1903 for R. H. Jackson, Redd was Benny Jackson’s
father. Many burials do not have markers; from the Osceola Times circa 1907,
Ruby Jennings “a tender flower of the community” was buried here, but there
is no marker or age given in the commentary of Etowah news.
In December, 1926 Garden Point trustees received a land deed from Chapman and
Dewey Land Company. Trustees named were Augustus Marion Smith, Gordon Wimpey,
S.W. Morgan, G.B. Blalock, J.M. Simpson, and H.J. Meadows.
This simple country cemetery is unpretentious compared to other towns and cities
more elaborate markers. The shady tree lined cemetery mirrors a peaceful, majestic
rural setting with the horizon as far as you can see. The people who are laid
to rest here are basically good people. Names like Avery, Casiday, Chambers,
Collins, Crews, Davis, Girdley, Hall, Harris, Horton, Jackson, Johnson, Jones,
Kemp, King, Langston, Lunsford, Martin, May, McCallister, McCollum, Morgan,
Pruitt, Rogers, Roland, Sharp, Shelton, Smith, Stokes, Truelove, Walker, Wildy,
Williams, Wilmoth, and Woodruff dot the landscape. It’s a place where many babies
were buried before health care was readily available. It’s spilled with the
blood of soldiers who died serving their country. Some tombstones have poetry,
some have angels and two have garden seats. Originally this was a free cemetery
to be used for the people who lived and worked and died in the area.
In 1933 the Shelton family lost their youngest daughter, Myrvis, from blood
poisoning. The funeral was held in the West Ridge school house on a cold rainy
March day and as the funeral procession traveled to the cemetery the bridge
collapsed. This tragedy rallied the community to build a church. My dad Carl
Heard, donated his sawmill crew to erect the wood frame building at the southwest
entrance to the cemetery. Gordon Wimpey had started an earlier church but it
floundered. Mrs. Cleora Chrismond, a Shelton family member, Molly Meadows and
other community people solicited funds for the church which eventually became
a Methodist church rather than a non-dominational as first suggested. The church
nobly served in that capacity until 1993 when it was disbanded and the building
was sold to Mr. Norman Clay, a grandson of Cleora Chrismond’s.
Problems arise when you have something for “free.” As the years went on it became
evident there was no provision to care for the rather large burial grounds,
with trees falling and weeds growing, and people burying their dead and then
not marking their graves. Someone has to get angry to attack a problem of this
size. Frances Horton went to bury her mother in 1973 and had to hack the weeds
to the gravesite. She left the graveyard with a new commitment to find a way
to keep the cemetery clean. She and Gertrude Girdley and others began the task
of raising funds with barbecues, auctions, and asking for donations and hiring
the cleanup on an annual basis.
Cleaning the graveyard was always a haphazard affair, with the manual labor
of farmers in the nearby area coming to tend the graves; Dan Stokes, Freddie
Simpson, Robert Wilmoth, Buck and Sophia McCOLLUM, Wileen Garner and Lloyd Shelton
and numerous others in bygone years. The Home Demonstration united for a time
and worked on the cemetery. From the late seventies, the Church of the Lord
Jesus Christ with Pastor Alvin Wilbanks at Carroll’s Corner became the caretakers
of the gravesites. More recently, Jason Lunsford and his wife accepted the task
of mowing the cemetery and keeping it looking neat and clean.
Around 1995 the people of Etowah started procedures to incorporate the community
into a township. Elected mayor Charles “Bo” McCollum, son and grandson of a
pioneer family, wrote grants to start the wheels turning from a place called
“Etowah ditty, Ain’t no town, Ain’t no city, just a little place called ditty
wah ditty” to Etowah township on April 9, 1996. Now people have street lights,
garbage pickup, flowers in the summer and decorations at holiday time. More
importantly, they have a meeting place. Jesse Pruitt’s former beer hall now
serves as the town hall but will hopefully will serve as senior citizen center/and
or library with additional monies. In 1998, a newer building was donated by
the American State Bank when they built a larger edifice in Osceola. It’s in
the process of being renovated.
Change is hard. It’s hard whether it’s for a person or a town. Behavior stays
stuck. But Mayor Bo’s energy and sense of pride in what could be was not to
be deterred. Some years ago the television show “Hee Haw” announced that Etowah
had a population of 103. Most of the present population of 352 people in Etowah
lives in trailer houses at a turn of the road of Hwy 136 two miles north of
Garden Point cemetery. A plea from residents that it was not safe to be out
at night because drugs, public drunkenness, fighting and crime were increasing,
prompted community action. They wanted quietness, order, decency and respect.
People in and out of the churches began praying for change.
To incorporate a township is a legal football but Bo, the elected mayor, was
ready for the task and after the basic underpinnings of garbage pickup, street
lights and other public needs were in place, the problem of the incorporating
Garden Point cemetery was ready to be tackled. Discussions were held in the
town hall for the better part of a year to air the legal responsibilities and
recordkeeping on a continuous basis. Garden Point cemetery had no known mapping
of the burial plots other than pioneer families had staked their claims for
certain spots. The conversations focused on three problems: 1) the cemetery
was full with so many unmarked graves that it was normal to dig into the remains
of a long forgotten grave, 2) people searching for information when there was
none, and 3) people from distant communities using the “free” resources to bury
their dead.
In the fall of 1997, I had been in Kentucky working on family genealogy and
found a book listing the Heard names on markers in the county cemeteries. This
printed evidence helped me find ancestors I had been searching for three decades.
Eureka, I found them! My gratefulness knew no boundaries for expression. I decided
to make a database of the Garden Point cemetery so future generations could
appreciate their sense of history as I did in finding mine. Using a video camera,
I filmed and then typed the name, birth and death dates of each marker. I’ve
since learned from many sources there are possibly twice as many unmarked graves.
With my printed database of 1165 marked tombstones and 116 unreadable field
stones I showed up in Etowah on a pivotal night in October in 1997 where Attorney
Lee Fergus explained how to bring the deed up to date. It was determined that
the township needed to nominate a successor team of trustees to accept the deed
and then legally sign the deed over to the township of Etowah. How proud I,
Shirley Heard Brackett, was to serve as one of the five successor Garden Point
Cemetery Trustees to accepting the deed along with Robert Wilmoth, Camilla Koch,
Shirley Johnson, and Nancy Hall. At a later date we signed the deed to the care
of the township of Etowah, which ended our roles as trustees.
Although community functions, donations and trusts have paid for the mowing
of the cemetery in the past, the ultimate goal of the role of the newly appointed
10 member Garden Point Cemetery Association is formulating policy and to solicited
funds to become financially solvent for cemetery upkeep in the future. The association
members elected were Shirley Heard Brackett, Polly Girdley, Ernie Girdley, Laura
Girdley, Nancy Hall, Shirley Johnson, Camilla Koch, Sophia Mc Collum, Freddie
Simpson, and Robert Wilmoth. After the church disbanded and the building was
moved, the land was eventually deeded to the township which joins the cemetery.
The sale of these plots will give 144 more burial sites for the people around
the Etowah community and will help but not solve the financial situation.
In March of 1998, after a legal survey of the former church property, the Garden
Point Cemetery Association made their first legal decisions concerning the requirement
of a concrete liner, the price of individual plots, the opening and closing
of the graves, basic recordkeeping with the township, and the requirement of
markers for future burials. These decisions were based on comparisons, as well
as other considerations, with other communities. We can not be a free cemetery,
nor can we be the cheapest or the most expensive in the area. We still need
additional monies for the mowing and maintenance of the cemetery to supplement
the community efforts of barbecues and auctions. Donations can be sent to Etowah
Township, Garden Point Cemetery Association, and PO Box 313, Etowah, AR 72428.
For the most part, the old Garden Point Cemetery is closed to new burials except
members of the community are welcome to bury their families in spots reserved
from the past. Burials in the former church plot are available to purchase from
the township of Etowah. If you have evidence of family members buried in the
older section, it is recommended by the Garden Point Cemetery Association that
you provide markers for your loved ones. We would like a record of every citizen
buried in Garden Point. Even though there is no marker, please call or come
by the town hall to record the name, birth and death dates of your family members.
We are also collecting written obituaries for Garden Point historical records
of the cemetery to make a booklet in the future. If you have copies of older
citizens obituaries please send them to the Etowah township.
Etowah has office hours from 9 to 5 Monday through Friday. The town hall meetings
are held 3rd Tues of the month. Martha Weathers can handle the office needs.
Call 870 531-2340 for further information.
Shirley Brackett fills the gaps of history with research that illuminates
Arkansas past.
Written by Barbara Massie, published Arkansas Democrat
Gazette Aug 1, 1999 updated and revised for corrections by Shirley Brackett
Mathey, May 2006
Several years ago Shirley Heard Brackett’s journey to a
small town in Kentucky changed her life. She was trying to find her
great-great-grandfather’s grave, a man named Wm Harvey Heard.
Someone
suggested the pharmacist at the local drug store could help. He conceded there
was information available. Back in the ‘60’s, he and his daughter had catalogued
records of the county into a published book. There was a copy in the local
library. The book held written evidence of family genealogy, information that
Shirley had been searching for thirty years.
Shirley Brackett, a Horseshoe
Bend resident, discussed with her sister Christine Heard Shoemake, the
possibility of doing the same sort of record for Garden Point Cemetery in Etowah
(Mississippi County). Many family members (Smith’s, Woodruff’s, Heard’s, Pierce)
are buried at Garden Point and the sisters grew up feeling proud of their Etowah
roots. The sisters decided a database of the burials in the cemetery would
eventually help those who wanted a history of relative buried there.
Etowah’s
Garden Point Cemetery is located on a high piece of land at the intersection of
Arkansas highways 140 and 136 in the southwest portion of Mississippi County.
It’s approximately 145 miles from Horseshoe Bend, her home for the since moving
from Michigan where she was a teacher in Lincoln Park High School.
Etowah is
a Cherokee name meaning “Muddy Waters” and much of the area was swampy
bottomlands before roads, levees and bridges were built.
The 1880 and 1890
censuses show there were several families living there, but the town seemed to
spring to life around 1900. That was also when townspeople started burying their
deceased on high dry point of land, a place where one can stand and see for
miles.
When she started cataloging the cemetery, she took a video camera and
photographed graves to be as accurate as possible. Since then, she has spent
many hours walking the cemetery to complete a grid for plot map. At one count
she found 1295 marked places, field stones marked another 128 burials. She has
been told there are probably four or five times more unmarked graves than there
are marked ones.
The oldest grave located was the grandfather of good
friends, Olive and Juanna Jackson. Redd Jackson, a young logger of thirty-five,
died of pneumonia Aug. 27, 1903. Later, his widow Lister Kirby Jackson, married
Nelse Woodruff, a relative of Shirley’s.
It’s been said that Garden Point
cemetery is full. It was a “free” cemetery, which meant there was no restriction
on burying the remains of a loved one. Recently some would dig a grave, only to
discover a body already buried there.
Frances Horton went to the cemetery in
1973 to bury her mother. She had to hack her way through the weeds to the
intended grave site. She left the graveyard with a new commitment to find a way
to have the cemetery in a better condition. She became the best source of
information about who is buried in the graves in Garden Point.
The Etowah
townspeople were holding meetings in 1997 to incorporate the cemetery into the
township. Brackett was in the area and decided to attend an incorporation
meeting. It was an opportune time. The lawyer explained that to incorporate the
cemetery into the township, they had to nominate a committee of subsequent
trustees to accept ownership of the deed. Brackett smiled and said, “That night
I raised my hand and became one of the five trustees.”
Their first step was
to sign a paper stating they were the new trustees of the cemetery. Later, they
signed the deed over to the township where records can be followed generation
after generation. Shirley knew her most important contribution was to serve as
the historian, since she had already compiled the database of marked
graves.
“It isn’t that I want glory here, I want more information to make a
historical statement.” Working on finding who is buried in the cemetery is
time-consuming. She said “I just can’t keep my hands off this project, it just
consumes me.”
It takes intensive research to find who is buried in Garden
Point Cemetery. Brackett gestured with her hand in the air, “I will never know
where some of these people are buried. My first objective is to know who is
buried there. She researches the libraries for newspaper obituaries. It takes
four hours to go through one roll of microfilm. Then she copies the records and
then types them into her database and then into the obit.
Some people know
where family members are buried. At a recent Memorial Day program, she received
information of ten names for the plot-map. Sometimes conversation leads to new
placement information. Speaking with family members, she can now reconstruct the
obituary. Families know 3 generations; the deceased, the first generation of
parents, and then third generation descendents.
Brackett, a retired school
teacher has set aside her own list of “books to be written” to find the names of
those in the unmarked graves. She said, “It’s a good feeling, because you don’t
do a lot of things in life that you think might be long lasting. I want to make
a difference in this world, to have the feeling of giving something back.”
Shirley Heard Brackett Mathey
Who am I? Who would spend 10 years of their
life working on dead people? Duh!
First of all, I am a member of the Etowah
farming community that I call home, no matter where I live. My parents,
grandmother, brother and sister are buried there.
I consider myself first
class; I was the child of Carl and Georgia Heard. My life had been a reflection
of the values my parents gave me without realizing it. My Dad, Carl Heard, was
intelligent, serious, dedicated, witty, hard working, My mother was sharp with
money, supportive, loving, greatest cook in the county and didn’t have a lazy
bone in her body.
From this background, I became educated, BS in Home
Economics from University of Arkansas, then after I married, (a, Glenn Brackett,
my high school sweetheart, started teaching Home Economics moved to Michigan,
started to get more education. I have a Masters in Home Economics Education and
in 1977 I received a MS in Guidance and Counseling.
My husband Robert Glenn
Brackett died at age 47 in Oct. 1981.
After leaving teaching in 1986, I
became involved in a computer business, tended my parents in their latter years,
developed a speaking business. I was single for 8 + years, and then married a
good man but we were extremely incompatible. In the process of the divorce some
12 years later, my college sweetheart called, he had lost a wife due to a brain
tumor. Less than five months later, Fabyan Courteney Mathey and I were married
Oct 2001 in my parent’s home in Etowah. Our mayor, Bo McCollum was the official
of the ceremony.
In the early 90’s I wrote 8 books from my expertise of
working in Family Life Education, marketed them to education institutions, then
in 1995 moved to Horseshoe Bend, Arkansas where I still live. I started the
research for the cemetery because in working on the Heard geological research I
found needed information based on cemetery markers in a book in Kentucky. Garden
Point was a cemetery without records. Etowah has a historical past but it wasn’t
gathered in one spot. I do hope you enjoy this as much as I have in gathering,
researching, going visiting, getting on the telephone and talking to a person in
a retirement home and listening to them rattle on about home and marvel they
have great memories of Etowah as do I.
LOOK FIRST AT THE DATABASE
My first
issue was the database for Garden Point Cemetery, which had no records.
LOOK
SECOND AT THE PLOTMAP
Second I worked on the plot map, the place people in a
an alphabetized numbering system.
READ THE OBITUATIES
But somewhere in that time frame I began to see the need for
obituaries.
This is my records to see how it progressed.
> 80 OBITS MAR 29
1999
> 152 OBITS Jul 20 1999
149 OBITS Oct. 15 1999
164 OBITS Feb 26
2000
228 OBITS Aug 10 2000
283 OBITS Sep 2004
540 OBITS Aug 1
2005
663 OBITS Nov 2005
1023 OBITS Dec 1 2005
HELP MAKE OUR OBITUATIES MORE COMPLETE.
These are some paperwork that I worked up but never sent.
Dear Interested Party of Garden Point Cemetery,
Thank you for your information/interest / response about our beloved Garden
Point Cemetery.
As the self appointed historian of Garden Point Cemetery, I
find information in various ways.
(newspaper research, contacts with Etowah
people and Memorial Day, written letters or e-mails.
I am working on 3 sets
of records:
I To compile/complete a current list of WHO is buried at Garden
Point Cemetery. (GPC)
II To compile/complete a current placement of WHERE
people are buried at GPC.
III To obtain a historical reference by
reconstructing obituaries (WHAT FAMILY) of people buried at GPC.
I To compile a current list (DATABASE) of WHO is buried at GPC.
To date
1/22/2006: Records show 2003 + persons who are buried at GPC, of which 200 + are
unknown.. a stone, marker etc) (There are spaces for approx 5000 ? persons
according to some conversations with early townspeople.)
II To determine placement) using a (SPREADSHEET) of WHERE people are buried
at GPC.
To date 9/1/2004 I have 1878 persons in the database marked and
unmarked of which more than +200 are stones.. There are places with no
placements, however, upon digging in these areas, they run into bones, caskets,
etc.
III To obtain or reconstruct history of Etowah relatives (OBITUARIES) of data
of GPC. THIS IS MY MAIN FOCUS NOW!
Here’s how to reconstruct your families
obituaries: Besides the NAME and DATES (which I usually have)
Add the PLACES
of (A) birth and (B) death.
Please recognize the historical value when you
list 3 or more generations: (1 ) - the parents - 2 deceased- (3) the
survivors.
Survivors: include spouse, children, grandchildren, and great
grand children.
The services: Minister, place/time of funeral, and the
mortuary used. If you know, if not, leave it out.
(2) NAME BIRTHDATE
DEATH DATE Usually I have these.
I need places of (A) birth and (B) death.
(1) They were born to
(parents)
_______________________________at
(A) (PLACE
State/township)__________________
They died at (B) (PLACE
State/township)___________________________(perhaps the reason)___________
(3) Survivors include:
Service: include mortuary, church/ time of funeral.
Personal info: Include military service, occupation, denomination, interests /honors.
Return information as soon as possible to either :Shirley Heard Brackett
Mathey
1108 Cook Rd
Horseshoe Bend, AR 72512 870-670-5450
email
shirley_courtmathey@centurytel.net
Mayor “Bo” Mc Cullom
Etowah Township
PO Box 113 Etowah, AR
72428
870-531-2340 e-mail: etowah@ritter.net
> 80 OBITS MAR 29 1999
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1999
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540 OBITS Aug 1
2005
1023 OBITS Dec 2005