My Family Tree is Full of Nuts

Right now I am aggravated , angry, sad and as we say in the South ” mad as two wet hens.”

This year marks my twentieth eighth year of genealogy. I LOVE GENEALOGY, I love the hunt, I love visiting cemeteries and admiring the tombstones from hundreds of years ago. I like think about the people that are in the ground, are they in wooden coffins or are they in a fancy coffin, what type of life they had,  were they rich were they poor. If it was a woman she possibly had children and grandchildren did she wear an apron, cook apple pies, wash her clothes on a rub board and then hang out on the lines to dry?  Was she a skinny woman or one of those fat fluffy women that we all loved to crawl up in those kind of grannies lap and smell the scent of powder that she perfumed herself with while she hugged us and gave us a million kisses.   Was PawPaw a farmer, or did he work at the bank, wear overalls, chew tobacco or dress up in a suit, tie and hat?  You get the idea, if you have ever visited one while you were researching you know exactly what I am talking about.  Today I visited one in Northeast AL, Piedmont, AL to be exact and I am very sad for a lot of reasons. You see this one was damaged and it is very old.

Some of the early settlers of the area are buried here. I saw a lot of beer bottles , broken tombstones, turned over tombstones, potato chip bags , soda bottles and golf balls.Time did not break these tombstones. SOME TRASH OF A CRIMINAL DID THIS. Who does this kind of activity? Who is so much of a low of a life and bored that they feel they have to go in a cemetery to cause destruction? CRIMINALS, TRASH, SCUM OF THE EARTH.

I want you to look at these pictures at what some heathen did.  Why would ANYONE want to desecrate a cemetery?  It broke my heart. Can it be corrected? Can someone help restore this old cemetery back to what it should be or does no one really care anymore?

What really should happen here is some company donate a fence, enclose the property and the citizens whether it be a Girl Scout/Boy Scout or some church organization should go here and clean this place up. Someone should volunteer to keep it cleaned up. This is families, people that used to walk the earth.  I’d even suggest the city let the jail workers go up there and clean it up.  I tried to stand up as many tombstones as I could and it truly was sad and I am very angry that people would do this and then no one will correct it. My husband Gary said “you have been in 1000’s of cemeteries all over the USA and this one by far has been the worst one.”

One day it will be “Oh I think there used to be a cemetery there.” Reason being, it will either be overrun with weeds, bushes and someone will have totally destroyed the place.

I lived my early life in this area until I graduated a long time ago. I was shocked and saddened that this type of thing happened. NEVER would anyone of my era even think of this. I am coming back soon with some chalk going to the place, documenting every stone that is there for future generations of researchers. I hope to see it in better shape .