Wordless Wednesday Angel

Statue in West End Cemetery

Lingleville, Erath County, Texas

Photograph by Judith Richards Shubert, (c) November 2008

Tombstone Tuesday - January 20, 2009

C. H. TRICE, SR.

Sept. 12, 1835
Aug. 12, 1921

TRICE

Order of Freemasons Symbol

West End Cemetery
Lingleville, Erath County, Texas

Ghosts in School Hill Cemetery?

I love ghost stories!

I spent one afternoon before Christmas in the North Richland Hills Library looking for books on Texas Cemeteries, burial customs and traditions. During my search through the digital repository I noticed a title that intrigued me, “Ghosts in the Graveyard, Texas Cemetery Tales.” I decided to check it out with my other selections of cemetery research guides and books on Texas graveyards.

Olyve Hallmark Abbott has written a delightful book filled with ghosts from at least twenty graveyards in North Texas and many more from other sections of our state.

You may have read some of my accounts of my childhood memories in and around the community of Lingleville in Erath County and the cemeteries there. I was so excited to find listed in Ms. Abbott’s section on North Texas graveyards one that is only ten miles northwest of my home in Lingleville.

Her story, “Skip-a-Rope” is an account of apparitions and laughter – the sound of children that are said to have been students in the old school that once stood there. The story is told that the graveyard overlapped the old foundation of the school. Some of the Lingleville residents who went to school there were also buried in this small graveyard called School Hill Cemetery or Upper School Hill Cemetery.

“According to Dave Julian of ‘The Shadowlands’, the theory is that former school sites may have a buildup of psychic energies of emotional events having previously transpired there. This is an open invitation to spirits.”

I decided to go with my sister and sister-in-law to find this little graveyard and take pictures and record any information on tombstones found there. Being stubborn females, we refused to allow my brother to call his friend, Mike, for directions. So we bundled up since it was a bitterly cold day and drove to the area where we remembered School Hill to be located.

There are two School Hill Cemeteries – the Upper School Hill Cemetery and the Lower School Hill Cemetery. The ghosts that Ms. Abbott writes about are found in Upper School Hill. It is a small, unfenced cemetery and has twenty-three marked graves. In “Cemetery Inscriptions, Erath County,” Weldon Hudson in 1970 indexed seventeen marked graves and six graves marked with fieldstones without names or dates. “The earliest tombstone is dated 1884 and it appears the cemetery has not had any burials since approximately 1918.”

Since we refused to ask for directions to the Upper School Hill Cemetery, we only got pictures of the better known (to us, at least) Lower School Hill Church and Cemetery. Newspaper reports from the area records Lower School Hill Church was organized in 1929 and closed its door in the late 1950s.

The day we visited, there was no one around even though the cemetery was obviously well cared for. The abandoned church building was open to the elements with some heavy screens on the windows but open doors.

The building held old church pews that were scattered around and pieces of the ceiling were falling down.

My photo taken in 2008

In 2002 when Charlie Turnbo visited Lower School Hill he found and wrote about a podium sitting on top of some pews. He also posted a picture of that scene at Texaescapes.com. I took a picture of that same pew in 2008 and the pictures look almost identical.

There is a beautiful mural on the wall behind the pulpit where the podium once sat and it also looks virtually the same in the 2002 and 2008 photos. It was painted by Annie Lynn Leatherwood, 1952.

“When indexed in 1970 by Weldon Hudson, there were five marked graves dating back to 1905. There have been more recent burials here not included on Hudson’s index.” My sister recognized some of the names on the gravestones and I have included them here along with my transcriptions and photos of the Church.

Maybe another day I’ll ask my brother’s friend, Mike, for those directions to Upper School Hill where I might be one of the “fortunate” ones to hear the children singing and playing “Skip-a-Rope.”

Lower School Hill Cemetery is on private property.

There is not a curved lichgate but the double gate was unlocked.

You can reach it by turning northeast off Highway 8 onto 397

west of Lingleville going toward Desdemona.

The artist's signature and date can be found in the lower right hand corner.

DAVID GLENN

Apr. 17, 1828

Oct. 18, 1908

There is a closed Bible on top of marker and has the Gates of Heaven symbol inscribed on front.

In the background is a very large cedar tree that is common to this part of Texas.

I could not make out all of the inscription on this stone

but it has the same last name as the taller one just above.

At RootsWeb George and Elayne Gibbons have transcribed the above stone as reading:

Glenn, Mertie infant dau of J. W. & M. A. 3 May 1905

Some of the family names found here are Moon, Elston, Glenn, Sims, and Armstrong.

You can see more of my photographs of Lower School Hill Cemetery here on my Photostream at Flickr.

Sources:

“Ghosts in the Graveyard, Texas Cemetery Tales,” 2002, Olyve Hallmark Abbott, Accessed 2008, North Richland Hills Public Library.

Texasecapes.com, “The Churches of School Hill,” 2002, Charlie Turnbo, Salado, Texas

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~pairplace2/lowerschoolhillcem.htm

Pictures taken by Judith Richards Shubert, copyright 2008

Lower School Hill Cemetery, Lingleville, Erath County, Texas

Tombstone Tuesday - December 30, 2008

JAMES R. BEECHER
Born
Aug. 9, 1876
Died
Oct. 30, 1906

"God calls away when
He thinks best."

West End Cemetery
Lingleville, Erath County, Texas

Photograph by Judith Richards Shubert
West End Cemetery, Lingleville, Erath Co., Texas
Copyright 2008

Roses Abound in Texas Cemeteries

In my short time as a graveyard rabbit, I have taken several photos of tombstones adorned with images of flowers. The rose appears over and over in our Texas country cemeteries. In researching this and other symbols I came across the great resource, “Texas Graveyards, a Cultural Legacy,” by Terry G. Jordan. At the time of its publication in 1982 Jordan was a professor of cultural geography at North Texas State University.

According to Jordon the rose is an ancient symbol of the Magna Mater (the great Mediterranean mother goddess). Frequently appearing on markers commemorating mothers, roses often with thorny stems attached, can be found on very early commercial stones as well as those made at the present time. “Clearly, the inspiration for this symbol came most directly from the Southern and British folk custom of planting roses in graveyards.”

Ruth dau. of / A. L. & Katie Sloan

Born Jan 22, 1897

Died Aug 12, 1900

“Our darling one hath gone before

To greet us on the blissful / shore."

West End Cemetery, Lingleville, Erath Co., Texas

Belvin R. / Son of

H. E.(?) & F. M. / POWELL

Born / Mar 25, 1899

Died / July 29, 1899

“Sleep on sweet babe

And take thy rest,

God calls away when

He thinks best.”

Ramsey Cemetery, Lingleville, Erath Co., Texas

Lela Ann

TAYLOR

Dec. 29, 1903 / Dec. 19, 1978

Ramsey Cemetery, Lingleville, Erath Co., Texas

W. G. (Buster) Tidwell

Oct. 9, 1908 - Apr. 5 1959

Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Tolar, Hood Co., Texas

HENSLEE

Ray

Aug. 28, 1913 / Mar. 19, 1990

Father

Tommy

Oct. 4, 1919 / May 26, 1993

Mother

West End Cemetery, Lingleville, Erath Co., Texas

SNIDER

Bertha “Bertie”

Oct. 4, 1894 / Dec. 20, 1907

Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Tolar, Hood Co., Texas

DeAnna Rene Noland

Oct 28, 1964 / Feb. 13, 1992

“Love Lives”

West End Cemetery, Lingleville, Erath Co., Texas

Found at the foot of a grave in
Mount Pleasant Cemetery
Tolar, Hood Co., Texas

RICHARDS

Willie Laura

June 21, 1894 / Nov. 2, 1966

John Robert

July 17, 1890 / Jan. 24, 1975

Whitt Cemetery, Parker Co., Texas

This is my father’s parents, my grandparents. They lived the last several years of their lives in Lingleville in Erath Co., Texas close to my father and step-mother.

Photographs taken by Judith Richards Shubert, Copyright 2008

Sources:

Texas Graveyards, Terry G. Jordan, 1982 by the University of Texas Press

Accessed from North Richland Hills Public Library, December 2008

Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Hood Co., Texas

Ramsey Historical Cemetery, Hood Co., Texas

West End Cemetery, Erath Co., Texas

Whitt Cemetery, Parker Co., Texas

Tradition of Scraping the Earth / Rocks Placed on Graves

The traditions found in the burial customs in rural Southern cemeteries are varied. There is a crossover of ethnic and religious backgrounds found often in the same cemetery. Customs such as “scraping” the earth is still found in many Texas cemeteries, but many that I have visited have only two or three sections or graves that are treated in this manner, or none at all. Since I have become a member of the Graveyard Rabbit Association and have begun to earnestly research the practices and traditions of this area, I realize that there are many things I have overlooked in my visits to graveyards of my childhood. I had not even noticed, except perhaps in my sub-conscience, that there were a lot of graves that were cared for differently than the others.

The tradition of removing all grass from the cemetery and leaving only the bare earth is falling by the wayside in many Texas cemeteries. The tradition speaks to the respect family members have for the deceased. But whether it is the fact that now there is oftentimes one person paid to take care of the cemetery or it simply takes too much of the family’s time to keep the grass off of the grave, our cemeteries are changing.

Another custom that seems to go along with the “scraping” of graveyards is the one of adding rocks, pebbles, ornaments, glass shards, and other items to a loved one’s grave.

In the little cemetery beside my childhood home in Lingleville, Texas I found only five or six graves that were covered with rock and none that were racked or scraped. But the rocks were placed there to keep out the encroaching grass, I’m sure.

In the picture above you can see two family plots that have white rock and gravel covering the graves. A close-up is in the next picture. Notice the angel statues that are lovingly placed there.

I will now be more observant and record with my camera the graves that are cared for in this manner.

In “Texas Graveyards, A Cultural Legacy,” Terry G. Jordan states that “rarely does one encounter scraping outside the Gulf states and South Atlantic coastal plains” and that it is unknown or very rare that you find it in North Carolina and Middle Tennessee.

According to Mr. Jordan the origins of most of our traditions in Southern Folk cemeteries are too ancient to even be in our memory. But he believes archival evidence points to the West African slave coast. There were bare-earth cemeteries found there that were nearly the same as those you find here in the South. He also states that the "barren" graveyard could have spread to Texas through Moorish Spain and Mexico as the majority of traditional Mexican cemeteries are without grass.

All photographs taken by Judy Richards Shubert
at West End Cemetery, Lingleville, Erath Co., Texas Copyright 2008

Sources: Texas Graveyards, Terry G. Jordan, 1982 by the University of Texas Press
Accessed from North Richland Hills Public Library, December 2008

Last Will of Mr. Farmer - Lingleville, Texas

West End Cemetery

A lot of the childhood memories I have took place near the small, neatly manicured cemetery of West End in the tiny, dairy community of Lingleville in Erath County, Texas. When my father remarried after having been left with three small daughters to raise with the help of my mother’s immediate family, we spent half of our time in the little frame and rock house that resides beside this still used cemetery which is so typical of the ones you find in this part of my home state.

We spent many hours “visiting” the dead, carefully tiptoeing past the headstones, and depending on the time of day or night, marking our escape route with wary eye as we dared one another to go to the far end at the top of the hill. As we grew to adulthood we enjoyed watching our children enjoy the same fascination with our childhood playground.

I don’t remember any of us being disrespectful. It was a natural thing to do – walking and playing in the cemetery. Every visit to the “home place” is punctuated with time taking a leisurely walk, traveling the same path we once took as children. And now the grandchildren are the ones running from stone to stone, reading the inscriptions and calling out to one another to hurry.

This Thanksgiving as my sisters and I joined the grandchildren in the afternoon we saw a memorial we had not noticed. How we missed it before is a mystery. We read it and laughed as we remembered the gentleman whose life it spoke of. I will not share the names and dates on the gravestone since one of them is not deceased, but I wanted to share the epitaph with you here.

LAST WILL OF MR. FARMER

I leave:
To my wife, my overdraft at the bank – maybe she can explain it.

To my banker, my soul – he has the mortgage on it anyway.

To my neighbor, my clown suit – he’ll need it if he continues to farm as he has in the past.

To the ASCS, my grain bin – I was planning to let them take it next year anyway.

To the county agent, 50 bushels of corn to see if he can hit the market – I never could.

To the junk man, all my machinery – he’s had his eye on it for years.

To my undertaker, a special request – I want six implement and fertilizer dealers for my pallbearers, they are used to carrying me.

To the weatherman, rain and sleet and snow for the funeral, please – no sense in having good weather now.

To the grave digger – don’t bother, the hole I’m in should be big enough.

All photographs taken by Judy Richards Shubert
at West End Cemetery, Lingleville, Erath Co., Texas Copyright 2008