A Cenotaph in Brister Cemetery

Right: View of the cemetery where old and new stones mark the graves of Attala County residents.

Below: Entrance to Brister Cemetery


Brister Cemetery is located at Hesterville and is believed to have been established in the mid-1840's, when Edmund Brister's sister, Matilda Holland Brister, died and was buried on land that he owned. Although the cemetery began as a family cemetery, it later became a place for members of the public to bury their loved ones. Located in Brister Cemetery is a "cenotaph" erected as a memorial to Morgan Guest/Guess, who served in the War of 1812 in Tennessee. According to the memorial pictured here, Morgan Guest was born in North Carolina on August 22, 1773, the son of Captain Moses Guest, a North Carolinian who served as a Captain in the Revolutionary War. The younger Guest died in Mississippi on February 8, 1853.





Since this is the first cenotaph this graveyard rabbit has stumbled upon, I decided to look up the word "cenotaph." According to Wikipedia, a cenotaph is "a tomb or a monument erected in honor of a person or group of persons whose remains are elsewhere." The word comes from a Greek word which means "empty tomb." A common example of a cenotaph is a monument or a memorial that is erected and dedicated to a group of individuals for a particular deed or service.