Resident rescues family cemetery By Val Van Meter The Winchester Star -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FREDERICK COUNTY - A graveyard says a lot about humans and time. For Marvin Wharton, the old Carper family cemetery, southeast of Winchester, holds stories from the past. Ken Kovach has spent hours carefully trimming vines away from the old tombstones at the Carper family cemetery on land he purchased seven years ago. Kovach spent months reclaiming the cemetery from trees and brush. (Photo by Jeff Taylor) Ken Kovach, who has rescued it from the clutches of nature, is worried about its future. But where does its story begin? Kovach can show deeds recording William Carper's purchase of 65 acres of land along the north side of the Millwood Turnpike in 1852. Six years later, Carper added 60 adjoining acres to his holding. In 1866, a section of the land along the turnpike from Boyce to Winchester was cut off for a Methodist church, which was constructed a year later. In 1892, J. Scott Carper, a son of William Carper, deeded a half acre of the property for a cemetery. The deed stated that the descendants of William Carper and relatives of people buried in the cemetery would have a right of way to get to it. That may be a clue that the Carpers had offered burial plots to people outside the family. In the early 1980s, Marvin Wharton was working on family genealogy. Records reveal sad tales By Val Van Meter The Winchester Star -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick County - "There are sad stories associated with all cemeteries," said Ken Kovach. Kovach spent the winter months rescuing the Carper family cemetery from obscurity under layers of trees and underbrush. The impetus came from a visit last year from Marvin Wharton and Linda Martz, who were searching for ancestors buried there. Kovach, who had purchased the old Carper property in 1998, has learned a number of stories about those resting in the cemetery. One example is Mary Betty Wiley Whorley, who gave birth to twins in 1926. One twin died immediately, and the second a week later. The following week, Mary Betty joined them in the cemetery. These few facts have been preserved, but, Kovach noted, for most of the graves, not even a stone survives to tell a story. In fact, the cemetery itself was almost completely lost in underbrush until he began to clean it up. And, that, Kovach said, is a shame. He'd like to see volunteers create an organization to help people maintain their family cemeteries and perhaps reclaim some that are deteriorating. "We need a structured organization," Kovach said, which might include a surveyor, historian, someone with technical skills in computers, someone who knows plants and some willing workers to help in retrieving cemeteries, and any information they contain. Since family cemeteries are becoming a thing of the past, and because many of the family members who still try to keep up such burial grounds are unavoidably getting older, an organization which could help them would be appreciated, he said. "Nobody here is famous," he noted of the Carper cemetery he's plotted and preserved. "These are good, hardworking people. Maybe people who had bad luck." Such places might not have the romance of historic places like battlefields or the homes of the famous, but, he said, they are "hallowed places" none the less. Kovach believes that finding them, documenting them, preserving the information they contain would be a worthwhile project. He'd love to talk to others who feel the same way. The saddest story of all would be if all the family graveyards were lost. Contact Val Van Meter at vvanmeter@winchesterstar.com. "Those people become alive," he said, as you learn more about them. He explored the old Carpers Valley church but couldn't find any burial site there. In hope, he slid a note under the locked door, asking for information. A month later, he was rendezvousing with a resident of Sulphur Springs Road, Annie Shaffer, then in her 80s. She took Wharton to see the old Carper family cemetery, where several of his distant relatives, Wileys and Shaffers, were buried. Shaffer was a daughter of George William Wiley, who was also buried there. When Wharton, who was born in Middleburg but lived in Texas and Idaho, moved back to Virginia in 1989, one of the things he wanted to do was to place markers on the unmarked graves of some of the ancestors he had located. "Unfortunately, I didn't get to this one, before I decided to leave Virginia again," to live closer to grown children in Utah. However, another cousin, Linda Martz of Middleburg, also became interested in genealogy. Last year, Wharton took her to Carpers Valley Road to show her the cemetery. They couldn't find it, until they met Kovach. He led them up the new road to the cemetery, which was overgrown with trees, fox grape and creeper. A pine tree had crashed into the burial ground and the wire fence setting it off was collapsing amongst the brush. Kovach and his wife had purchased 102 acres, containing the cemetery, in 1998, from J. Scott Carper's daughter-in-law. The old deed, mentioning the cemetery, was found and the burial plot was platted and set aside. Kovach recorded an access to the cemetery from the new Kenny Lane constructed to serve six lots carved from the old Carper property. Building a road, their own home and planting thousands of loblolly pines had kept the Kovaches busy for seven years. Then, last November, Kovach took a walk back to the burial plot and looked it over. Another pine had fallen into it. A maple was pushing a headstone over. Others were toppled. Graves appeared as sunken spots. "For seven years, I said I wanted to clean up the cemetery," Kovach explained. "I suddenly got an adrenaline rush and the thing on the bottom of my 'to do list' was now on the top." Through last winter, Kovach dedicated Sunday afternoons to the effort. Winter is the best time to clean up a cemetery, he said. No snakes, bees, ticks, or bugs. Drafting his wife to help, he removed six large trailer loads of brush and fallen trees. They raked the area to clear years of leaves. Marvin Wharton canvassed his extended family to raise the funds to purchase a tombstone to commemorate family members who were buried in the Carper family cemetery. He returned to the area this summer to take care of the project. (Photo Provided by Marvin Wharton) Kovach used a metal detector to locate the remains of rusted funeral home markers. He sketched, photographed, and charted the more than 50 graves that seemed apparent on the ground's surface. Some had stone markers of varying sorts. Some inscriptions could still be read. Some graves appeared only as depressions on the ground's surface. Kovach believes there may have been six rows of graves, with perhaps 10 graves in each row. It appears that most people were buried facing toward the east, he said. There may have been head and foot stones at each grave, although only a few remain. Grave stones that have inscriptions have them on the west side, he noted. Some graves are only marked by "field stones," blank pieces of rock of various sizes. But on one field stone, someone laboriously etched three initials and dates of 1864 and 1884. The two 4's are reversed. The latest date on a tombstone appears to be 1936. When Martz came back in February to attempt some cleanup, she was amazed. It was done. She contacted Wharton in Utah, and he, in turn, solicited donations from the descendants of Wileys and Shaffers and Martzes (his own great-grandfather) he knew, to purchase a stone marker for the six family members known to be buried there. Landowner Ken Kovach, who spent the winter months reclaiming the plots from trees and underbrush, believes the Carpers allowed other members of the local church to bury their dead here. An old deed gives the families of those buried in the cemetery access across Carper's land. Some graves have incised tombstones, others just hunks of limestone, some nothing at all. (Photo by Jeff Taylor) "We don't know who is buried where, but we do know they are somewhere in . . . the last row on the far west side of the . . . cemetery," Kovach reported. For that reason, Wharton said, it was decided to put all the names, and birth and death dates where known, on a single stone at the center of the row. Were the Wileys and Shaffers related to the Carpers? Perhaps not. Kovach thinks that the Carpers allowed members of the Carpers Valley church to be buried in their family cemetery. It may have been a question of finances, he said. The church sits in a hollow, against a wet-weather stream and has no room for a cemetery of its own. In May, Wharton returned to oversee the installation of the stone. Putting faces to the names, Ken Kovach holds a page of pictures, located by Marvin Wharton, to match the names on the newly-installed tombstone at the Carper family cemetery. Wharton's maternal great-grandfather is buried there. (Photo by Jeff Taylor) The project "took 20 years," said Wharton, who had previously been successful in installing a marker for an ancestor who was wounded at the Revolutionary War battle of Yorktown. He noted that, in addition to other relatives who donated funds for the marker, and Martz, he was assisted by a local genealogist, Beulah Astle and a surviving relative in Winchester, Pearl Dalsig. As for Kovach, Wharton said, "He's taken a special interest," in the old cemetery. "He's was very kind." Contact Val Van Meter at vvanmeter@winchesterstar.com SOURCE= http://www.winchesterstar.com/TheWinchesterStar/060812/Life_cemetery.asp