2nd and final installation of article by Ann Smith, from the Eufaula Tribune, Sunday, July 9, 2000. ================================================== Providence Cemetery ================== On a down the dirt road, (this is actually on the paved section, Co. Rd. 79), a well maintained, (this is also questionable), Evans family cemetery catches Russell's eye. "All of these cemeteries were inventoried by Marie Godfrey before she died," Russell says, as she approaches the Providence Cemetery near Old Batesville. "There were a lot of people with money up in here," Russell says, and "a lot of people from Ft. Browder, where a block house was built for defense against the Indians. There were probably 400 or 500 people here," Russell says. "There was an academy here, for the children of the plantation owners," she says. A marker erected on Highway 82 by the Historic Chattahoochee Commission tells the story of the Providence settlement, founded after the Rev. J.W. Norton and his wife migrated here from South Carolina"with his family and a wagon train of followers." In 1835 he established the Providence Methodist Church in the Old Batesville area. "He was a real pioneer," Russell says. The old Providence Cemetery is one of the better kept of Barbour's hundreds of old rural cemeteries. Iron fences surround several of the family plots, and small square markers implanted in recent years mark dozens of unidentified graves. Again, the graves of infants and children are sad reminders of a hard life in a world without the miracle of today's medicine. =============================== Thornton family cemetery ====================== But perhaps the most intriquing-and saddest-stop on Russell's "field trip" is at the remote Thornton family cemetery, on property owned by Russell's father, the late Lee Clayton. Driving along Lee Clayton Road, Russell looks for a slight trench in the roadside embankment. First she passes it, but readily spots it after turning around. Well off the road, on a hillside that offers a view all the way back to Eufaula during the winter months, is a burial ground Russell says contains several hundred graves. It began as the Thornton plantation family cemetery. Years ago, a trench was dug around the Thornton family graves, and today one large marker notes the lives of three family members. But surrounding the family plot, going far back into the woods, is evidence of countless unmarked graves. Russell quickly spots one of the simple pine markers, a broken kerosene lamp and a broken pitcher. She has written an account of her exploration of the cemetery in 1987, when she and her father discovered numerous artifacts places there by families of the hundreds of blacks who were buried there after the Thorntons abandoned the area. She says it was a common sight in old black cemeteries in this part of the south to find the fragments of vases, pitchers and sick room artifacts placed at the grave of the deceased. "Historical Atlas of Alabama, Volume 2, Cemetery Locations of Alabama," lists 178 cemeteries in Barbour County. Within them stand hundreds of markers inscribed with bits of information about the lives of those interred. But within them also are the resting places of hundreds of settlers, farmers, slaves and free blacks, women and children, who, as Russell says, "lived, died and are forgotten." ================================================== Richard Price SOS 6-3