178-Year-Old Cemetery: Family Found! Railroad and Georgia's History Revealed! - Geneva, GA

well right now we're in the Geneva city cemetery in Geneva Georgia down in the southern part of toat County and uh I've always had a little bit of interest in this Cemetery because this community is where my uh Daddy was born and raised and uh he absorbed a lot of toat County History through the people that are that that he knew that are now buried in this Cemetery uh he he grew up here and uh after he retired in his older age we would come down here and he would visit every grave in this cemetery and give me a history of everyone that he knew buried here and uh you know I retained some of that but a lot of it I've forgotten he was he was a walking Library when it came to this place but this Cemetery space right here was rather interesting because this was the first graves in the cemetery here this was the Jameson family the Jameson family lived in a house right across what what's now Highway 41 out here uh anyway the old Jameson home place was down there that way and this was their family Cemetery up here on this hill and they gave this whole land for a community cemeter once Geneva was founded and uh years later I I mean I can remember when this was overgrown with just uh Private Hedge over in this but some of their descendants came back and marked to these Graves so these uh headstones have been here probably oh maybe 25 30 years so the Jameson didn't they didn't have any markers originally no they had no names but they still had family here who knew who was buried where and they put these markers in here but they did not Mark those Graves over there so I you know we always heard this was all the Jameson so I don't know who's in that plot over there so this rock wall dates back to the original it does time period of the cemetery yeah according to this the first uh grave put in here was 1846 was George Jameson yeah George Jameson 1788 to 1846 Nancy Nash Jameson 1800 to 1869 and Mary Nash which says sister is born in 1803 and she died in 1857 oh wait there's something over here is there yeah it's busted up and just a you make of that what is it can you tell what it says not really I looking at it on the camera screen it looks like it says if f r i o r but that's it that's all that's right here just this little piece so H maybe it doesn't even maybe it was just a broken piece that was tossed in here or I don't know I think that that's for many many years that was overgrown and uh that's definitely a grave right there somebody somebody cleaned it up you know sometime in the 1980s the cemetery has a cemetery Association that looks after it well the cemetery committee and uh they do a very good job it's it's very clean that's really interesting though just I guess it would be an epap or something it's like an old concrete marker yeah that's stamped and just has I4 H and it's right there's definitely a grave there the headstones down there footstone is down here that that fell out of the wall you can see where it came from only one marked grave that we can see here it's interesting though you notice the difference in the rock that we're accustomed to seeing in other parts of toic County yeah this is sandstone oh okay uh it's very different than the Rock around like the Boon Cemetery yeah very much so whoa Dan look at that cedar tree that is an old Cedar yeah it is and when my daddy was a little boy he told me that this was a Grove of Cedars up here oh really uhhuh there actually another thing I noticed too um when you were telling us where we were at look at those two trees that form the yeah this split this Cedar used to have a cable around it with a turnbuckle you know to tighten it to keep it from splitting and the cable grew into the tree or you know the tree grew around it and I guess it eventually broke and maybe somebody took it off but this is something that's that's quite a landmark here uh my daddy told me this looked just like this when he was a little boy and he would be uh he would be 96 years old if he were still living but this supposedly there is a young woman buried in here from what he was always told and this was planted I mean this was put here and there was a rose bush planted and the rose grew all over this and it was supposed to look like a Flower Basket that's really neat and it's a shame that there's no one left now who remembers who is in there I don't know if this is a member of the same family or not this is a uh ohya Pascal the pascals were part of the old Central Georgia railroad group that came into Geneva when the railroad came through here is that when Geneva got um founded was with the railroad yes the railroad came from Columbus out this way and I think it got to Geneva in the 1850s and uh Geneva was you know it became the only shipping uh uh railroad line in TOA County so everybody had to bring their cotton to Geneva and nice little size Town grew up around the depot and Geneva was very prosperous for a long time after that uh but Geneva burned twice it burned once by when General Wilson came through during the war Civil War then Geneva burned again in the 1890s uh there was a a man who turned a lamp over in one of his stores and he set the store on fire and the stores back then were built out of wood and they were very close together and it burned the entire uh business district burned it all so the when did the railroad come through here I want to say 1855 maybe okay yeah mid-50s 1853 to 55 it came from Columbus and it was going to Fort Valley but it they got as far as what's known as uh mael which is between uh Butler and Junction City and it went as far as a little place out there called blackjack which is between Geneva and Junction City and it it stopped there for many many years and I was told that the uh railroad then extended on to myel and it dead ended there for a long time before they finally continued it on uh East W but there was a man here in Geneva that's buried uh somewhere over that way Mr Sydney cait and I think his daddy's name was Kate cait if I'm not mistaken anyway one of them name was Kate cait and Mr Kate cait told my daddy that uh the first time that he had ever seen a wagon wheel with spokes the aans were unloading it at blackjack or or myel uh that was the end of the line for the railroad and and all of my family worked for the railroad all the granddaddy my granddaddy all of his brothers all of his uncles and even his father and his grandfather all worked for the railroad starting in the 1850s and they worked out of Columbus going east and west from Columbus and the line that came all the way out here they unloaded the first wagon that uh Mr cait had ever seen that had spoke wheels he said prior to that every wagon he had ever seen in his life had solid wooden Wheels wow so that was that was rather unique yeah but uh that just shows that he was raised in a very primitive time right for for them to have wooden wheels that were solid on everything but uh anyway uh the pascals were u a railroad family gotcha so I saw a couple interesting monuments over here those uh White bronze that I think that these were bought off the railroad in the late 1800s 1880s and they they're called White bronze but they're type of metal I don't remember exactly what type of metal it is but they stay looking perfect if they don't get broken yeah that's zinc zinc yeah yeah as a matter of fact Mary uh Mary Hollis Mr Felix Pierce's mother has a uh grave marker made out of this on her grave over in Butler gotcha uh hers is what they call a grave cover it's very Victorian it had a space in there for a flower bed in the middle of it oh wow yeah uh but anyway she was descended from the holles that we went and visited out here this Floyd Harvey is just a child born April 11th 1870 and died April 23rd 1882 just right after his birthday gone from our home but not from our hearts and these are very nice metal Stones it's been there a long time yeah sleep on my sweet one sleep so early Gone to Earth a child is lost to Heaven a cherub is born this one does show some wear but look at these brick yeah another child this family right here operated the hotel in Geneva I didn't know there was ever a hotel here big hotel in Geneva called the moris hotel and it was operated by Mr Perry moris and it originally had been the part of the Jameson estate it was a I think Mrs mors was a Jameson buried over there in one of those Graves let's see if she's not so this was Perry moris senior that's m p pa moris I think she was a Jameson so her parents are buried over in that rock wall there and uh she and Mr mors built this big hotel in Geneva and I think the original Hotel burned and then they built another one and uh there's a picture of that that I have made from the air that you can see the hotel and several of the stores across from it but these are all their children Perry Morris these were originally mhm stamped concrete Stones I guess someone came back later and put those on here there's another one of those yeah zinc monuments so I don't think these were in business is very long everyone that I've ever seen has been late 1800s yeah 1880s and as my understanding it was a you know catalog ordered item off the railroad uh-huh well they have stood the test of time they sure have everyone that I've ever seen around here yeah me too Julian C Candler born October 7th 1850 died August 4th 1882 says Oh Brother first to leave our band life's song is yet unsung while gray hairs gather on our brows Thou Art Forever Young so we will meet again he died as he lived a Christian so I guess these were these were cast after they were ordered guess they had a template for it and then cast them I guess so very [Applause] nice in loving memory of OA Candler born January 30th 1853 died May 1st 1902 God gave he took he will restore he doeth all things well he was a Mason now this lady was a pascal also before she married at kandler Susan Pascal born May 9th 1832 died August 25th 1902 you know Pascal was a little Community just north of Junction City I didn't know that before Junction City was named that it was that little area over there was called Pascal gotta U like I said the the man that I got the picture of I think was the uh Depot agent at Pascal this is all the M family uh you know Cecil is uh looking and I think he just recently found the original M Cemetery down here in the woods uh these are all their descendants and this is the one my daddy was particularly good friends with this man here Mr anel mine he he uh impart Ed a lot of historical knowledge to my daddy uh Mr Ansel had absorbed a lot of history himself having grown up here and lived here his whole life bulletville where's bulletville this bullville is that Warm Springs yes it's modern day Warm Springs yep died in bullville Georgia Mary Francis Peele born in toic County Georgia April 6th 1838 married to anel Turner October 28th 1855 died in bullville Georgia August 27th 1905 asleep in Jesus bless sleep in which none ever wake there's Mr anel Turner buried there anel Turner right here and uh anel Turner was born in South Carolina May 21st 1825 and he died in Geneva Georgia on the 4th of July 1892 this the bottom with Jesus and he was a member of the Methodist Church looks like he was a devoted husband an affectionate father and a consistent member of the Methodist Church it's what the epap says and there's Miss Lily Bell McBride I remember a lot of stories about her McBride's had a big store in Geneva there's another Cedar stump yeah that's one of the stumps there were a lot of trees up here that were cut sometime in the 1950s I saw another stump as we were walking over this way yeah there's a Woodman of the world marker over there there's a cedar stump there yeah there's a stump right there this is a couple Civil War veterans says sergeant major David a Jameson Company E 9th Georgia infantry CSA and Sergeant George a Jameson company D 28th Georgia artillery CSA and it's got he was born 1832 and died in 1895 and if that that one had a date down there I cannot read it today these are Cosby's it's interesting she died born 1841 died in 1907 my granddaddy bought the old Cosby home and that was that was the first house that he owned in Geneva it was across from the schoolhouse and this is one of their daughters Ed Lee who died July 8th 1884 looks like the barkdale plot here that's all the barks Dales and the man and woman buried right here were these were special friends of the family this was Mr Ed Tillman Mr Ed Tillman operated a big store in Geneva and back then the stores were built very close together they were built out of wood they were long wooden buildings they didn't have brick stores here like they had in Toton on the Square the stores here were oldfashioned they were built out of wood but Mr Tillman ran a big store and he gave my daddy his first haircut he had a stool in the back of the store and a pair of Clippers that my daddy said that would pull your hair out by the root they were dull and they were hand operated you had to squeeze them to operated they weren't electric right and he would give all the kids in town a haircut and that was his wife myrtis Lee McCary wife of J Tillman called her Miss Mt and the reason that is on the back of the stone is this used to be the main entrance to the cemetery now really you would not know it now no see the highway was right down there and the the driveway came right up here this was the main drive right through the cemetery yeah I can see that and uh so they had their look headstones facing the driveway so that when you drove up here you could read them but now if you look right down there you can see the old road bed you can see that that was the highway right there the highway wasn't where it is now this was it that Terrace right there yeah that was the road to Columbus gotcha and they changed the highway and and this little indention right here was the old entrance into the cemetery yeah so once they changed the highway they put the new entrance over there where that gate is and this lot here this is now you've heard me I have referenced her many many times this is Aunt Mary cook aen this is my aunt wow this is uh this is my daddy's older brother Lewis and he married Aunt Mary and this was her family's plot in other words that's her mother and daddy there Mr Gordon cook we'll see Mr Gordon's wife was Mary Edna Edge and we just came from the edge Cemetery out in the middle of nowhere that's right well her parents see were w e edge and see he's the son of Reason Edge remember we just saw Reon Edge his grave out there in the family old Edge Family Cemetery yeah okay well reason's wife Susan see was a deloney before she married him and some of the delonis are buried in the Toton Cemetery but anyway this m Edge moved to Geneva and built a big plantation house up on the hill uh uh going toward Toton big house up on the left and anyway he married armenta Brandon this is her right here she's got she's got mentor on her grave but uh her name was armenta Brandon and she was from Ridgeway yeah she so she was we've been it's been a long time but we went to the Brandon Cemetery a long time ago that's right her daddy was uh cus Marian Brandon you know we got a picture of him he was an old uh justice of the peace at Mount in Ridgeway so see it says daughter of SM and Mary BS brownon born in Harris County Georgia well born in Harris County 1851 married to W Edge Harris County Georgia 1875 and died in Dublin Georgia July 26 1920 so she died over the other side of mon and was brought back over here and buried yeah uh he died in Geneva William Edward Edge and he was uh seems to me like seemed to me like he I may be wrong one of them fought in the Battle of Atlanta gotcha I don't know if it was it may have been him well he was he was in the first Battalion Georgia Cavalry U I remember him talking about one of them fought in the Battle of Atlanta but I I don't know if it was him are one of the brandons uncle Li and Aunt Mary have a daughter that was cremated and her ashes was scattered here gotcha that was my first cousin her name was Elaine but there are lots of cooks and other family connections but Aunt Mary and her mother and that uh that side of the family right there they were related to everybody in this Cemetery yeah in one way or another she was related to everyone wow they were just early settlers here and you know they they when the folks came here they brought their cousins and you know their their brothers and sisters and whole families came and settled right I think the Brandon connection is really cool along with the edge connection because we've seen so many of these different cemeteries over time and then to see the intermarried families you know the brandons in the edges is it's pretty neat it's kind of like a puzzle almost that comes together you know uh there is an interesting story about one of the families buried here I'm not going to call their names because they still have relatives around but there was a person uh here in the cemetery who uh wound up in the uh insan asylum in Millville yeah and you know all the good folks here in Geneva would would go over to visit him every once in a while and uh one person that's also buried here went over to visit him and they went into in the mental hospital and asked for him and they said yeah they took him out to the front yard which was all fenced in down was off a big lawn and they pointed way down on the other side of the lawn and they said he's down there see him down there by the fence said yeah says help yourself go visit him so he started down across the front yard and he saw somebody to his side walking along beside him and he looked and he said it was this big guy that looked like he was 6'4 and 350 lbs and he was walking along beside him with a crazy look in his eyes and he said he got faster and he said that guy got faster and said before he knew it he was running and that guy was chasing him and they ran all around that place with that guy chasing him and he said he was just about to give out and he fell down and that guy hit him on his back and said I got your tag huh oh [Laughter] man and you remember we just came through Carlile Road the other day yeah this is all the carile family U Martha Lee carile and my daddy were good friends and and her husband and uh Mr Buck carile buried right there uh he used to get down on his hands and knees describing the uh path that a rattlesnake made that he had killed and he would always do his hands like that and say that's how wide that rattlesnake made that path through the sand wow and somewhere my daddy had a picture of Mr Carlile down on his knees doing that yeah but anyway that's the Geneva semetery that's really beautiful it is it's very well kept and we can't visit the cemetery without visiting another friend over here though he's buried right down here but on the way down there this uh this lot here this man right here Jesse Kato Mr Jesse Kato drove the school bus uh back in the old days back in the 19 40s and 50s I know and I've got a picture of him standing in front of his school bus uh his let's see his wife was Lily may but his in-laws let's see Mr and Ms more My Mother and Daddy lived with this couple right after they got married they rented a room from Mr M Moore in Geneva and it was actually in the old Cosby house that granddaddy aen had owned at one time but Mr M Moore lived there and Mother and Daddy rented half of the house from them you don't hear people doing things like that anymore right but folks used to do what they had to do to get along this man's name is Clyde Leon Phillips and his wife Miss Elizabeth Mr Clyde and my daddy started school together in the first grade sat in the same desk together the desk were double you you've seen the pictures of the old desk that are made out of raw iron and they have the little seat that's the actually the the front of the desk behind well they were double and Daddy and Mr Clyde sat in the same desk together the first day of school and they were lifelong friends and I would say that 25% of everything that I own in my collection of junk I got from Mr Clyde really cuz he had that man had a barn that was just busting at the seams of everything uh he bought a a lot of old houses around Geneva and he cleaned out a lot of things and he ran a store here and he was also the postmaster most of his life but he he had a barn full of everything under the sun and and I'd go down there sometimes and we'd go down to the barn and before I know what I'd have a truckload of stuff to take home and uh I'd ow M I'd owe Mr Clyde my paycheck for that week but I was standing right there at his funeral when Bobby Smith the funeral dor walked up to me and said I want to make a funeral director out of you oh really yep and that was in February of 1987 seems like it was yesterday so did it work Dan did you become a funeral director I have now been a funeral director uh what 37 years since that date did you know Bobby Smith beforehand I did i' had known him all my life gotcha and he had grown up with my mother so okay so we that worked out for the best yeah oh did you ever think you were going to go to a funeral and get a job no I did not intend that I really did not but uh he told me to come on up to Manchester and I did I went on up there and sat down and talked to him and I've been there ever since yeah this is a modern Monument but it's very unusual I believe that's concrete isn't it is it uhhuh used to be painted white but it has aged it's beautiful it is just like it is it looks like old marble it does I thought it was older till he got closer H well the detail in that is really incredible that's a grave actually it's is it yeah it uh I don't think the driveway was probably here when or this close to it oh it is it's got see if you can read that yeah I see I might need to it used to be a tall Monument but people kept hitting it so I guess they just did away with it JB Jones died January 23rd 1878 age 62 years at rest make sure I got all the details right yeah age 62 years yeah wow I uh didn't realize that was a grave I thought it was just like a marker there it used to be about this tall and every time the truck came up here it would knock it over gotcha so I guess it finally got broken daddy school teacher is buried over here that's Mr Cecil Morgan he had the last store in Geneva not the last store but he was the last one to off at a big oldfashioned type store in one of the big wooden buildings he bought the old Bert store and uh took it over gotcha oh that's some more mine yeah more the mine family Bernard M and that may be who's in here thing about aot thing about the uh sand is once you compact around a grave it doesn't settle and a lot of these people are in Brick vaults here so you don't see the sunken Graves around here that you do in other cemeteries right that one's about to get completely covered by sand yeah it is this is Reverend hildr he drove a hook mobile do you know what a hook mobile was I do not it was a little automobile I mean it was pre-World War I it was ow I don't really know what model it was but I remember Daddy tell me it was a early teens oh wow it's called a h m o I think mobile hup mobile it was a little two-seater thing and he drove that kept it in the barn daddy said it was like a brand new one and his wife was Daddy's school teacher Mrs hildr and she Liv lived to be almost a 100 yeah 1875 to 1974 but when she was a little girl I mean when when Daddy was a little boy she would bring a Confederate uniform to school and show all the kids on confederate memorial day she bring that thing in daddy said it smelled like moth balls you know she'd have it in a little box but I think it had belonged to her daddy maybe gotcha and uh they only had uh that well they had that daughter there that's the only one in the family that I knew Miss Lois Lois Bennett and sadly she was uh her house was broken into and she tried to escape from the man who broke in the house by jumping out of window and she died from the injuries from jumping out that window that's sad I hate to end it on a sad note so let's yeah find some something a little more cheerful what can be cheerful in a cemetery Robert well you know we're in a cemetery and that's actually a valid point but a lot of times we're looking at uh it's not really Doom and Gloom in a cemetery but all the lives that were lived and all the stories that are here that's true and uh this is uh these are the Fullers I was thinking the caits were buried over this way somewhere okay these are the Fullers and the law Hornes these are the liggin this is some of Mr Ben Gilson's uh let's see if Mr Ben well they may not have buried her here oh anyway Mr Ben Gilson's sister married one of the ligans that is Dr Brooks you know there a Dr Brooks Road do it yeah oh box springs do you know who Dr Brooks was he was a doctor here he's buried right here now Dan why are these Graves at an angle like this I'm told or I was told that these Graves face true East in other words they brought a compass up here and laid out this Cemetery space gotcha uh of course they they bought the plot the plot was laid out the way it's laid out but it's not true East and they wanted to be Buri buried that way so they're buried at an angle that's Dr Simon W Brooks MD Confederate marker in memory of private Edwin R gouby company D 10th battalion Georgia infantry Confederate States Army 1826 to 1864 he died in the war this is some neat Graves this is under those trees I pointed out they kind of splitting Oaks here these graves are that's 1885 Mr William Terell Cosby was born in wils county in 18 in 1797 and died in toic county in 1885 it's neat you got your flashlight I can go get it this is a a number of children I thought it'd be oh yeah U James C brunette brunette born January 5th 1870 died August 20th 1870 Carrie B brunette born June 7th 1871 died July 9th 1873 Charlie L brunette died December 22nd 187 2 no born December 22nd 1872 and died January 26th 1873 come around to this side now oh my goodness Jesse P brunette born November 7th 1880 died March no May 28th 1882 mam M brunette born May 4th 1882 and died September 6th 1882 and I guess an unnamed infant son of TM and La brunette born June 25th 1884 and died June 25th 1884 let me see what else what on this side oh more Annie L brunette born July 19th 1875 died August 28th 1875 and another I guess unnamed infant son born and died on June 5th 1876 Nelly El brunette born June 13th 1878 and died October 18th 1878 God Loved These tender little ones we loved we loved yeah we love these tender little ones and would have wished them stay but our father's will be done they shine an endless day mhm so there they are yeah they one two three four five six 7 so how many names are there there's one two three four five 6 7 8 n that's counting the the infants mhm and see they have initials for each one yeah except for that one that was an in just said infant right there oh is that one say oh NLB mhm and jrb what happened here Dan did they have any children that LIF I don't know I never knew any burnetts down in this part of the county and these three children here uh now they're some of the Turners you know we we talked about Mr anel Turner that one there his name was anel Turner born 1863 and died in 1864 that one was born in 18 60 and died in ' 62 and that one 68 to 71 Elizabeth is that no Eleanor Eleanor something that begins with a a Turner wow this was like you know some cemeteries now have a baby section yeah some of the modern cemeteries I guess this was the baby section for this one because that's really all that's located right in that area right but there's lots of interesting Graves out here there are what is this name Beasley Hannah Beasley wife of Lasser Turner born in South Carolina March 7th 1802 died in Geneva Georgia July 12th 1884 blessed are the pure in heart lass returner born in South Carolina April 9th 1798 died here in Geneva June 13th 1887 blessed are the merciful what is biting me it's a mosquito see if there's a name on the back of this one that's a unusual Obelisk don't think so looks like they ever engraved it may have just been an obelisk in between these I don't see a footstone for that one yeah or you know what I think it fell off of that grave over there yeah you know what and somebody stood it up over here right cuz that yeah that does look like it should have had an oisk on top of it look at this think we can even see yeah right there yeah that's interesting I believe that that probably goes over here because that that's very out of place right well big chick is a calling it is it is let's take a look at this one real quick before

Channel: Sidestep: Adventures Into History

Views: 56,296

Keywords: sidestep adventures, adventures, adventure, adventure archaeology, sidestep, overlanding adventure, residential, residential school unmarked graves, haunted video, abandoned department store, old graves sites, creepiest discoveries, roadside, slave plantations in tennessee, creepiest places, great depression, cades cove, creepiest, homestead, best treasure hunt, best haunted houses, hidden in the smokys, important events in history

Id: rFX8HLJ5DT0

Length: 46min 22sec (2782 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 04 2024