Old Plantation Cemetery Hidden In The Woods Of Georgia (Cemetery Of The Enslaved)

and so this is where we're currently at here landlocked 186. and of course it's part of harry but this is all uh harris county yeah we're literally right now standing in land lot 186. so you want to read this real quick it's only two quick pages it gives you the information of terryville it's oliver and the people that we're getting ready to go see [Music] good afternoon i have the distinct honor and privilege of standing here on what is called terryville which used to be the terryville plantation geographically speaking we're located currently in harris county georgia right on the border line of talbot georgia the reason i'm here is because my family history starts here in this area the history of the terry family connection begins with mundy terry who was born in 1845 in talbot county and married elvira denson who was born in 1850 mundy terry was a slave here on the terry plantation behind me it's located here in shiloh run by the three brothers earlier today robert and i had the pleasure of being able to walk and identify the final resting place of several of my family members with robert's permission i would like to hold up this picture of frederick mundy terry born 1877 and died in 1938. also included in the picture is his wife nellie carter terry if you take a walk down the dirt road approximately about i'll say a good hundred yards or so their final resting place is located there at the terry cemetery okay yep and here would be my great great great cousin jim terry born 1858 died december 8th 1915 agent serious here at this headstone who'd you say this was uh again just a family member i wasn't able i had information on gym don't really have a lot of information here 63 years yeah and then there's it's just so faded yeah something engraved right there [Music] then you can see terry at the top here that's the memory of jim terry born 1852 bingo i was just about to say um you're historian like i am and we're told that each time we see this stone marker sitting up it is basically an unidentified slave grave exactly and they say if you actually look there will be a straight line coming down yeah and yeah cause looking up through the woods there i mean i just see them just kind of just popping up exactly all throughout here and so understanding that at the time 65 of enslaved human beings was here you can imagine what is out there absolutely going this way yeah we got the indention right there okay here's one stone there and then so this is two there's we've got one right here and then right behind it one more and one right beside it right you guys you see these two tones here that's where we're going so the only question i really had was jim is here and his brothers are here if we had to take a guesstimation i'll say that's a distance of about 70 yards so again i'm just wondering how much at that time was just completely open and how many slaves are out here right well i see behind you i mean we've got all of these even going down the street and again if you notice this also has writing on it as well we took a picture last time it seems as if they're lying straight up here [Music] like say it's my mother so yeah sure does what dunny would be short for i know sometimes samantha would be short for sam you know i yeah i'm not not quite sure on that one tablets there and again here and it just seems like it makes that perfect lineup it does yeah and it keeps going because you can see even if there's no stone you can see the indentions so that's correct that's correct and there's another large one here wow and then there's some type of a tablet lighting we were never able to quite make out uh at this i figured it has to be a t it looked like an inside tee f t h perhaps see frederick cherry heath is a prominent name i just can't i i'm thinking that middle letter has to be the t yeah i see e t so it's the eating yeah and the first part oh you know what i'm just not sure yeah i'm not sure it looks okay d d d oh is that a wire it's a backwards d oh either o n n don d o n that's what i'm saying d-o-n and then e-t let's kind of hard to say for sure so what you're coming up on now rob is what we call the heart of the series plantation the gravestones become a tad bit easier to read and standing here is my great great grandmother military with the picture that i showed you born 1867 died 1959 and here is what we call the legend of the family the man himself teal tears senior born 1872 died april 1938 and these two brothers were close in age so of course they grew up together thickest seas is what we're told and he was born 1873 1918 and this is his wife midi i don't really have a lot of information there on her and of course we have henry born 1862 and died 1913. okay as you said before we'll notice two unmarked headstones directly to the side of midi and there's a big indention yes sir correct right there that's true and then we'll notice another hand flowing towards going this way here it seems they're more tightly tightly uh buried here so something i just recently learned is that sometimes these field stones will have engravings in them so it'll look like just you know just a rock but they will actually have engraved something in them of course there's nothing on on this one but it's always good to kind of take a close look at them and this is this is two i'm assuming spaced like one burial right here right and maybe one another one way i was thinking as well exactly just kind of placed really tightly together and some of i've always said you know when a wristly beard out here i'm sure everything was clean you know grass and just over time has just completely become grown up absolutely and i can only imagine in the middle of the summertime what it looked like right how difficult it would be to come out if you hit if you had to guesstimate how many would you how many people would you say are buried out here because i'm seeing a lot and one of the things well you said in by 1865 they had 65 65 slaves so that was counted in the census and that's about 40 years after settlement here so and one thing also is with that i've been told with these unmarked graves is you always multiply them by three you know because you see these but there's two more that you don't see so i i would say you know it looks like more than 65 burials out here easily easily and that's another one here in the front killstone sure enough uh unfortunately we just did not see a headstone or any type of engraving past golden and the golden hearthstone is is marked and if you look very closely you can actually see the map slab even though it's it's called but we were never able to locate a headstone for these two here so i told you that you think you could see this from highway 85 you were never moving back here oh no yeah yeah and uh rob like you said if we found this one i like the number that you gave you know each time you saw one there's got to be at least what hundreds of these throughout the state of georgia oh yeah this area alone that we just don't know about yeah probably just lost the time absolutely here and again my father and i just guesstimated that they perhaps just laid it here to market we didn't really see a name on it right it seems like it's pretty deep inside the ground yeah it is but i don't see any any sign of engraving at least not on that side i'll check back here [Music] so yeah again when we came out we just estimated perhaps with the hillside clean just down to the valley that was just a beautiful place to lay your loved ones for their final resting [Music] place [Music] we really thought that this was lost forever to our family and we basically just took a hail mary pass and we came out in 2018 and we just walked the land we walked the land and we could not find anything and mr mcdaniel came up to us and he said what exactly you guys looking for and we said well there's a plantation here called the terry plantation and he said well have you guys gone above the hill we was actually located here and said have you guys gone up on the hill and looked he said no we'll give it a shot and we just walked up on the hill and literally stumbled across it and i can honestly say with fidelity to the camera my father is in his seventh decade of life i'm in my fourth decade of life we grabbed each other embraced hook and we just openly well i'll be honest about it i'll be honest we openly will that we were able to find this and uh find our family so we were walking around out here and spotted more graves correct right here we've got one two three four and five and then behind that six seven and i thought i saw an eighth one it may be right there oh that's probably it right there and then turned around and spotted on the back of on the back of jim jim terry's stone right here it says was a member of bethlehem baptist church and there's an epitaph a charge to keep i have a charge to keep i have and etc yeah except it looks like etc right there etc i don't know this is what it looks like but the charge to keep i have that's pretty neat yeah that's it okay so have you noticed that it would be seem like they're going back to back is that something if the field stone is facing this way and jim never facing and this field is that way or it's hard to say okay i would i'd imagine it would be head here and but that that being since there's only one field stone you know if there's two field stones usually a headstone and a foot stone but this is just one it kind of indicates that it would be a headstone except i take that back so i would say it's probably head here you know feet there laid out like that you got that one and then you know this is an invitation right here [Music] we've got that stone but what i and again this goes back to the thing if you see all of these marked stones even if it's just marked with a field stone correct and you add the two to it that you don't see and because i i just you know i didn't see these when we first came up here right that's all these other berries [Music] wow and so you know my question would be are these around the 1915 date or these earlier you know i would guess early what would you think i don't think early maybe it's weird that they don't have the the field stones like all these do sure so i would actually kind of estimate these being later you know matching maybe the later 1800s early 1900s because there seems to be a change between these well marked even though it's the fieldstones well marked ones up here versus these that are not well marked okay also the indention there's another one [Music] this is honestly like finding this sort of stuff it just it gets me excited because it's like these are the the lost you know right and it's also and with all of these it's always very sad because you don't know names for you know when it's about six names yeah you know we don't know their names right so i guess i'm looking at another field you definitely know your craft you definitely know your craft okay and then showing this looks like one here on the side of you that one over here wow so we are kind of more spread out than i was first thinking does this look like perhaps a tornado came through or a storm or they just look cut down it's just like we're getting to them i think well as possible there was a tornado that came through here a few years back okay uh this also looks like pine beetle okay so yeah but we've got more i think the estimation we're probably up to about what number roughly i i'd say easily a hundred up there correct right right obviously i was close to 75 80 myself mentally in my head so yeah that sounds about right and then you know what you've got you've got one two three four five six seven seven right here plus our eight that we saw over there plus the other one um yeah so this is another 20 30 easel right here well i've passed here numerous times and never knew that the other terry cemetery is located up here wow now this is the one that's on find a grave if you go to actually have a picture of this one wow and of course georgia highway 85 is here and i think directly across is department county yeah and that's what we was always told that the plantation straddle the talbot and the harris county lines cause these these people had they had land back then yeah so so this is you find dilson dan dan dan this is where we pulled up here and someone shot a gun over there and we said it's time to go that looks like we've got a uh yeah there's a gravestone right here this so this is the uh this is the white terry cemetery right here these would have been the plantation owners and their descendants um to 1912. now i think the uh matriarch of that family name was sarah is what i kept seeing this is stephen alexander he's also in my book as one of the brothers uh that actually had terrible and if memory serves me correctly according to the story it was steven that brought the slaves to the commissary to announce the emancipation proclamation tell them that they were free and he told them they could leave or they could stay and if they decide to stay then they would work half shell cropping so it was stephen that actually did that why and we've got over here oh here's sarah memory this is their mother in memory of sarah f wife of stephen g terry and from my understanding she was born in orangeburg south carolina and migrated i guess here from georgia during that land was august 10th 1802 she died june 18 1870 and there's an epitaph down there but i'm not going to try to read it today so this is sacred to the memory of another sarah mrs sarah cookson johnston and then you find one that says frederick that would be who my grandpa feel is named after gotcha i understand uh you know prominent back in the day that they were often named one of the male slaves after the slave owner and so that's what frederick t.o.t will be named after the fridge when we find him out here and this is interesting here it says the relict of david johnson i think relict means widow if i'm not if i'm not mistaken uh who departed this life let's say so she's actually pre-civil war 1858 in the 61st year of her age this is our sister elizabeth elizabeth caroline daughter of stephen and mary terry born january 11th 1799 wow that's the one with south carolina i see south carolina already yep and when i researched the family again they migrated from that section of south carolina yeah i'm wondering with my maternal great great grandmother was she perhaps born in south carolina and came here with them i would yeah you know very possible very possible she died in 1859 in the in um resignation wife of l.a simpson stephen and sarah what does that say and daughter of stephen and sarah terry born march 1830 okay she died 1857. she's 27 in memory of mary wife of stephen terry born july 20th 17 67 it is 60 68 68 and died july 20th 1860 is that it looks like a six yeah definitely almost a hundred yeah i think there's only one it's amazing how everything and everybody is connected it really is you know it really is thank you frederick hey you [Music] and then i'm just gonna go ahead and pose the question you know perhaps that was this one you know yeah you never know so it's interesting it's up here it's still thrown in hillstone graves now rob have you ever heard of slaves being buried in the white cemeteries being the trusted you know denture services butlers and cooks and yeah nurse mates i've heard of that as well okay so maybe that's what that is on this side it's very possible our father lamar simpson was born 1824 and died 18. now he didn't come up in any of my uh searches i haven't heard of lamar simpson yeah maybe it's uh married in married into the family yeah and that looks like it okay then this of course is our stonewall barrier coming this way the picture that we see here is the terry hamler sisters it's my grandmother and these are some of her sisters this jamie parker is actually buried here she was born 1899 1985. that's her husband of course customary tradition she was born to tear of course she took her husband's last name became a parker so therefore my father all of his first cousins my second cousins third cousins you know we're all terrorists but we do have different last names but that terry areas i survived though walk this way this is my beloved we call her ain't sack her name is sarah terry my mother's my grandmother's sister and she actually lived in atlanta for a number of years once she left what we call the country here and she lived in the area that's called old fourth ward edgewood area atlanta precious hollis no relation to me but she was the actual pianoist here for the church many years so this particular spot of land we have is my great grandfather's land grandpa till and he wielded in his d that he would give the land so that they would be able to build a church here and as long as a church or school is here they pretty much just pay the taxes on they're good to go and that was what he will to as children so uh even though we're here at piney grove cemetery the gated area has always been called the white folk cemetery and uh perhaps just due to segregation custom loss decided you know build a fence there keep it boxed in i'm not sure who's buried here so rob and i will walk over here and take a look at it so if you remember on an earlier video the other robert and i actually came and looked at this cemetery we had found it by accident and uh we're underprepared to come to this one always said we would come back and take a look out there because there's some interesting yeah so this is all african-american on this side but uh as i was just telling it done i was born and raised literally in this church baptized in this church and uh but all my life this is what this was called and i never knew of anybody to have a funeral here you know and so whenever we had a church members being right on this side that was just always what we said this is the white folk cemetery it's interesting and this is those are some nice hits too they are i remember the big milner okay is this a big one and we were looking for a little town cemetery that's nearby and accidentally found this one and there's milner's crossroads somewhat nearby which is why that milner sticks out but if if i recall correctly everyone in here is kind of there's three different plots but everyone in here is yeah absolutely everyone's pretty much related take the take the les breyer yeah we'll definitely go over the washing machine yeah these are milner's jordans this is an interesting one right here because this is sarah sarah reynolds and john reynolds and i remember this one when we came here last time so sarah died in 1902 and john reynolds his death date was never inspired and if you notice he doesn't have a foot stone out here either this is sarah so i think that you know he had his wife buried here he paid for a tombstone with his name on it wound up buried somewhere else yeah that had to have been it there's millers on those yeah these are milners from 47. and this was this was all grown up when we were out here it was uh in fact all those that are uncovered is from when we were out here yeah that was us that's our that's our mark wow i think there's some 1893 this one's from 1990 i think that was the newest one out here willie ruth brown by the grace of god that tree just didn't miss right notice how they just did spin the block yeah all right i hope you guys have enjoyed this documentation of terryville and your family and so much much as i have coming out here i really want to say thank you for bringing me up thank you thank you pleasure and on behalf of all of the tables we thank you so much thank you so much yes sir and one thing is we see all these graves so often and this is something i was just telling you a minute ago we see all these graves and have no connection correct and you provide the connection the story is about who these people are and it makes it so much more real thank you so much i really appreciate it sir once again thank you for everything thank you all right thank you you

Channel: Sidestep Adventures

Views: 88,215

Keywords: abandoned cemetery, cemetery, abandoned, abandoned cemetary, abandoned cemetery house, abandoned cemetery in the woods, abandoned cementery, abandoned cemetery philadelphia, abandoned graveyard, old cemetery, abandoned cemetery in wales, abandned cemetery, exploring abandoned places, abandoned house, abandoned & overgrown cemetery in the florida woods, abandoned grave yard, abandoned maine cemetery, cemetery tour, cemetery abandoned graves, slave cemetery

Id: GpHyJmhlyhQ

Length: 38min 2sec (2282 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 14 2021