from the Raleigh-Register Published: February 19, 2006 10:32 pm Mount Hope Cemetery in Disrepair Genealogy buff hopes to persuade someone to help straighten up graveyard by Matthew Hill, Register-Herald Reporter Shirley Taylor despairs over the disrepair that has befallen the MacDonald Cemetery. While the sacred site on Main Street in Mount Hope provides visitors with a view of Mount Hope High School, she fears that educators, students and passers-by are getting an education in the message that disrespect for the dead is inconsequential. “I just think it’s a disgrace that it has been allowed to grow up that way. It’s not respectful,” the 69-year-old Monroe County woman lamented. “I have a couple of aunts who have tried to get in because their grandparents are there. They can’t get in. The only way my relatives were able to get in there one weekend was by taking brush-cutters with them.” Taylor bemoans the briars, brush and trees that have claimed the resting place as their new home. Of equal concern to her are the graves that appear to be sinking into the earth. According to what her father relayed to her, a rock wall had to be built at one time to undergird the cemetery because the unearthing of the area exposed some caskets. This time around, the simple and slowly destructive forces of nature are the culprits. “Some of the neighbors who lived out there moved away, but they kept telling me they clean it every spring,” said Taylor, who claims she has checked on the cemetery regularly for 20 years. “I go there every spring and fall, and it has been that way for years. It’s never been cleaned. The way it is now, you would never know that a cemetery has been there.” Aside from the fact that her great-grandfather — an immigrant from Wales — was buried there in 1903, Taylor tells of several military veterans, including a Civil War soldier, who found their perpetual repose in the cemetery. “It’s a pretty good-size cemetery of probably 3 to 5 acres. I would say that there are over 100 people buried there.” The genealogy buff hopes to persuade someone — anyone — to share her passion for straightening up the old graveyard by clearing out the overgrowth and filling in the sunken graves. “A lot of the trees in there need cleared out. A lumber company could use the trees for lumber,” she said. “Someone has tried to fix a way to get in there by putting in blocks, but weather has washed them under. Some way needs fixed to get in there.”