A Final Thought: Saving Carden Cemetery

Two years ago, I got a call from a woman named Kirsten who lives in Seattle. She had stumbled on my mother’s genealogy book and found me here in Northeast Ohio.

Kirsten was interested in the Carden Cemetery in Hatchechubbee, Alabama. She has ancestors buried there, and when she travels back home, she sometimes visits their graves. Like me, Kirsten likes to trudge through the woods in search of long-lost cemeteries, ones where the headstones have fallen over, hidden under briar and brush, tall trees growing up and out of the graves.

Kirsten didn’t want that to happen to the Carden Cemetery. I agreed, so we recruited a few people and began a campaign.

But first, a little more about the cemetery:

I’ve written about these sacred grounds before, about the fire ant beds, rattlesnakes and ghosts. Buried there are ancestors of area families, including a few of my own.

And there are stories.

One ancestor had gone to the field to retrieve a cow and her newborn calf. When a neighbor volunteered to take the calf ahead in his wagon, the mother cow panicked and ran after her baby. Unfortunately, the rope this Carden ancestor was using to guide the cow got caught around his ankle, and he was dragged to his death.

There are graves of old people, and graves of toddlers and newborns, and one grave with its epitaph hand-etched in wet concrete with a stick in 1929. Early deaths were common back then, but that didn’t lessen the grief.

Life was hard for these folks, tilling the red dirt with a mule and a plow to plant cotton, corn, beans and squash, racing to the outhouse, making moonshine, dipping snuff. But according to more than one obituary, they “possessed Christian fortitude,” went to church on Sundays, and helped their neighbors.

Carden Cemetery is a square plot with a perimeter of just 400 feet. Most grave markers lie flat on the ground. The few that stand up sometimes fall over. Mr. Farrah, who owns the land around the cemetery, has kindly tried to fix a few of them. When the tombstone of James Matthew Carden (1838-1916) fell over, he put it back with concrete. Unfortunately, he placed it backward, so it now faces the wrong way. 

The split-rail fence surrounding the cemetery is falling apart. I remember the day we installed it many years ago. Mr. Farrah was mowing on his tractor when I decided to walk over the hill to locate a pond I remembered fishing in as a small child. Mr. Farrah held up his hand and shouted, “Stop! Rattlesnakes are all in this tall grass. Climb on the tractor and I’ll drive you over there.”

The pond was little more than a muddy waterhole, but when Farrah tossed in a handful of food pellets, the water churned with fish, no doubt descendants of distant ancestor fish I had once caught, cleaned, dusted in cornmeal, fried and eaten.

Our campaign to save the cemetery includes this: We applied to have the grounds officially recognized as a historic cemetery, and our application was approved in June of last year, when the cemetery became the fourteenth Russell County cemetery to be listed on the Alabama Historical Commission’s Historic Cemetery Register, which was created “to recognize Alabama’s cemeteries and to encourage their continued preservation.”

Then we started a small nonprofit called the Carden Cemetery Association. The land is being deeded to the association so it may be cared for in perpetuity. In January, the organization received its official nonprofit designation from the IRS, which means it can now start fundraising.

I’m not good at asking for money, but my friend Jim encouraged me. “What your group is doing is important,” he said. “Otherwise, the final resting place of these souls will be lost in the undergrowth. Plus, it’s interesting work. If you ask, people will help.” My eyes glistened at his kind words.

The funds raised by the association will be used for restoration projects, including:

• The installation of a historic marker from the Alabama Historical Society
• Cleaning and repairing gravestones
• Replacing dilapidated fencing
• Engaging ground-penetrating radar (GPR) services to help determine the locations of unmarked graves, including those of the formerly enslaved.

If you would like to help us in this effort, I thank you kindly...and in perpetuity.

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Note: To make a tax-deductible contribution to the Carden Cemetery Association, please visit GrandmotherPeggy.com/carden-cemetery and click the “donate now” button.

(This is the same website where you can read Mitch’s mother’s cookbook.)

To write a check instead, please mail it to: Carden Cemetery Assoc., c/o Mimi Magazine, 50 Pearl Rd., Suite 115, Brunswick, OH 44212. If you have any questions, please email Mitch at mitch@mimivanderhaven.com.

Mitch@MimiVanderhaven.com