A MATTER OF GRAVE CONCERN

"If it weren't for the people buried around here, probably none of us would be in Bollinger County now. We need to remember all of them," said LaDonna James, who with her husband, John, have spent the past 13 years mapping cemeteries for inclusion in the county's first copyrighted cemetery directory.

The directory is scheduled to be published in April, and it will contain information on at least 180 cemeteries.

Some of the cemeteries, such as Baker Cemetery on Highway 51 south of Marble Hill, where about 1,400 people are buried, are well known to the public. Others are so small and obscure they were nameless, and access often requires a strong pair of legs or a four-wheel drive.

The Jameses have scouted out 154 cemeteries and marked their locations on a county map. They figure they'll make about 30 more forages into pastures and thick woods to verify the existence of more.

Since some of the cemeteries had no names -- and were unfenced, little more than a marker or two -- the Jameses christened them with the name of the person in the oldest grave. The oldest graves date to the 1830s.

Information garnered is stored on a computer. The cemeteries are listed in alphabetical order, and names, birth and death dates are added when possible.

"Bollinger County is behind the surrounding counties on having a cemetery census," said LaDonna James. "When we're done we'll have the book copyrighted and send a copy to Washington, D.C., and our local library. It will be a big help for people doing genealogy."

Genealogical research is what prompted the Jameses to embark on their tireless pursuit. In 1976 LaDonna James, who was born in Franklin County and moved to Bollinger County in the early 1970s, her grandfather is from Bollinger County, began research on the Stovall family.

In 1986 she and her husband began tracing the lineage of his family, James.

Relatives of John James are buried in Furr Cemetery, but it took two years to find it.

"We looked and looked," said John James. "It was so overgrown, but we finally found it. There's a lot of field stones there but not many markers.

"Some field stones had inscriptions where people took chisels and put in initials. Some you can read easy and some you can't. Most people used limestone as markers because it's soft and can be chiseled."

Through conversations with friends, relatives and acquaintances, they soon found the county was peppered with many uncared for grave sites. Overgrown with weeds, shrubs and trees, tombstones knocked over and defecated upon by cows, the burial plots were abandoned by the living, lost in memory.

"What really gets me is our loved ones may be gone, but they shouldn't be forgotten," said LaDonna James, pointing to the location of a small cemetery on a county map. "Elvis Presley's grave will never be uncared for or destroyed. But not all these little cemeteries are being taken care of."

She said some small cemeteries have been bulldozed and turned into pasture for animals.

John James said Lassiter Cemetery has one tombstone left standing. "It's in the middle of a field, the other tombstones have been bulldozed under.

"We've found a lot of them bulldozed for pasture. People who bought the land didn't care about who was buried there."

LaDonna James said there's a small cemetery near Scopus "out in a field and the cows run over it. One tombstone is above the ground but the others were knocked over by cows and buried under their manure.

"I scraped around under the manure, dirt, mud and everything else to get the names on those stones."

LaDonna James there was a burial plot on some land along Route B and the people who bought the land removed the tombstones.

"We ran into a little hornet's nest with a woman there," said LaDonna James, shaking her head to the side. "She said even if someone had a relative buried there she wouldn't let them put a tombstone up, even though there was one there before they done away with it.

"She said no one can mark the grave there without a court order and even then she'll take it all the way to the Supreme Court."

But most people, say the Jameses, have been helpful in their quest to discover and map grave sites.

"We interview people as we go along. We ask them if they know anything about the cemetery or if they know somebody who does. We've really found out some interesting things," said LaDonna James.

Civil War skirmishes

John James: "I've always been interested in the Civil War, and according to our history books there wasn't much action here.

"But you get out and talk to people and they'll say, 'Oh yeah, there's five or six soldiers buried in that cemetery,' or they'll say, 'A Confederate soldier's buried along that road.'"

In Greenbrier Cemetery off Route PP near Ladd's Chapel a mass grave containing maybe 15 to 20 Confederate soldiers was discovered years ago as a new grave was being dug.

James said officials found uniforms, coats, buttons and skeletal remains.

The grave is also believed to contain the remains of a "lost family" that was killed during the war.

About 70 years ago a Mr. Pape, when he was a teenager, placed a concrete pillar at the site to mark it, according to James.

There are field stones marking the graves of seven Confederate soldiers on the "old military trail" near County Road 532 between Zalma and Lutesville, said James. On the map the land is identified as Virgin Creek.

James said the soldiers were bushwhackers who lived in Mingo Swamp, and were known as "swamp angels."

He said they foraged for food and supplies, but made a big mistake one day: "They robbed a Randolph James ... took all his furniture and meat.

"The Home Guard saddled up and ambushed and killed seven of them. They killed the Confederates riding on the wagons, and a few on horseback got away."

Other Civil War action relates to the murder of a six-member family near Country Lanes, just south of Marble Hill. James said his uncle, "Banner-Press" columnist Clyde Willis, told him a Confederate colonel, his wife and four children were killed and thrown into a nearby spring.

The name of the family was Patterson, and they were from Tennessee. "They hadn't lived there very long." The spring came to be known as Patterson Spring.

James said the bodies were discovered about three days after the murder and were buried on a nearby hill. The grave markers are still there.

A Union soldier is buried along a road between Route H and Glenn Allen.

"The story passed down says he was shot in the stomach and was going to die, so someone gave him milk to drink so he'd go ahead and die," James said.

The name of the soldier was W.W. Wood. After the war his relatives from Ohio came to his burial site and asked the Harrold family if they would tend to the grave.

"They've taken care of that grave for over 100 years." said James. "I think two battles were fought in that area ... when fields were plowed they'd find lead balls everywhere."

LaDonna James said there are Civil War soldiers buried in Bollinger County Cemetery and in Baker Cemetery.

"There had to be battles going on all around here," she said. "When Highway 34 was being built they found the bodies of soldiers."

More curiosities

Research by the Jameses on Bollinger County cemeteries also uncovered this:

-- Franklin James is buried in Lower Grassy Cemetery. At the age of 19 he was shot to death by Pinkerton detectives who mistook him for Frank James, outlaw brother of Jesse James.

"They shot first and asked questions later," said John James, who's related to Franklin James.

-- Indians are buried on what's called Talley farm. According to LaDonna James, there was a man around Zalma who used to howl in the woods at night. He said he was an Indian and wanted to be buried with his people when he died.

"He definitely was buried where he wanted to be," she said. "There's no grave stones but there's rocks that look like markers."

-- John Kerr is buried in Kerr Cemetery near the Castor River. He was murdered for his land, but the murderer was never convicted.

According to the Jameses, Kerr staked out land near the river and walked to Jackson to buy the land from the government. He walked for two days.

On his way back someone killed him with an ax. The next day this person appeared at the land office in Jackson to buy the same land.

"People didn't think he knew that Kerr had already been there. He thought Kerr was on his way there," said John James. "Nothing was ever proven. And there's still relatives of the two families in the area."

The Jameses don't believe every cemetery or grave site in the county can be found. When people die, they say, they often take knowledge of obscure burial sites with them to their grave.

But by April over 180 cemeteries should be listed in the copyrighted cemetery directory. Profits from the directory will go toward upkeep of cemeteries. The Jameses plan to repair tombstones and fence burial plots.

Anyone with information that could help their research are asked to call the Jameses at 238-4689, or write them at HC 66, Marble Hill, Mo. 63764.