Jessamine Cemetery - Ridgeland, Mississippi

Photo: Digital Collection (2009), privately held by Janice Tracy

The entrance to Jessamine Cemetery in Ridgeland, Madison County, Mississippi is seen above. With its historic area and another one that contains more recent burials, the cemetery is owned and maintained by The City of Ridgleland. Partially surrounded by a newer housing development with well-kept, tree-shaded yards, and a portion of the Natchez Trace Parkway, the cemetery is in a serene and peaceful setting in one of Madison County's most beautiful areas.

Already buried in Jessamine Cemetery are some of Madison County's early settlers, including James B. Yellowly, known as the "Father of Ridgeland." Among others buried in the cemetery are members of families with the surnames of Adcock, Battley, Baker, Carr, DeVelling, McNair, Moody, Schluetter, Tucker, Tweedy, and Woodbridge.

Hillcrest Cemetery - Goodman, Mississippi

Hillcrest Cemetery in Goodman, Mississippi, located in Holmes County, holds the history of almost two generations of my father's family. Pictured here is the double grave marker of my paternal grandparents, Clark Commander Branch and Lelia Porter Branch, located in a newer section of Hillcrest Cemetery, in Goodman, Holmes County, Mississippi. As the inscriptions on the gravestone states, Clark Branch was born on August 9, 1899, and Lelia Porter Branch was born on July 17, 1904. This photograph was taken by my parents several months after my grandfather's burial and not very long after the gravestone was placed at the gravesite. As you can see, my grandmother's inscription shows only her date of birth, as she continued to live almost twelve years after her husband's death. She never remarried, and when she died on January 16, 1991, Lelia Porter Branch was buried next to her husband.

Hillcrest Cemetery is the burial place for many early residents of the area who lived in the Goodman area or "just over the Big Black River," in Attala County, where members of the Branch and Porter families had settled over 150 years ago. My grandmother's immediate family, except for one brother, are buried here in this cemetery. The graves of her parents, J. J. Porter and Margaret Susannah ("Maggy") Merriweather Porter, along with five of her brothers and sisters, Etta Porter Parker, Leonard Porter, James Porter, Newell Autry Porter, and Vertie Porter, are located nearby. Another brother, Clarence Porter, is buried in Jessamine Cemetery in Ridgeland, Mississippi, near where he had lived most of his adult life, and in the same cemetery in which my own parents have chosen to be buried.

Members of my grandfather's family interred in Hillcrest Cemetery include at least one of his four sisters, Stella Branch Young and her husband, Woodard Young, and their mother, Claudia Baldridge Branch. Edward Arthur Branch, Claudia's husband and father of her five children, died when my grandfather was 15 years old and is buried in Good Hope Cemetery near Camden, Mississippi, in Madison County. An account of Ed Branch's death, along with a photo of his Woodmen of the World gravestone, can be seen here.

James B. Yellowly, A Founding Father of Ridgeland, MS

Tombstone of James Burrough Yellowly, b. NC

Buried in The Chapel of the Cross Cemetery

Madison (Madison County) Mississippi

The name "Yellowly" is a name that is deeply entrenched in the history of Ridgeland, Mississippi, the largest city in Madison County. Around 1853, James Burrough Yellowly migrated to early Madison County from his native Halifax County, North Carolina. While Yellowly was still living in North Carolina, he was a well-known physician and a teacher of medicine. He was also well-known as a member of the Philanthropic Society at the University of North Carolina, a society that was instituted on August 1, 1795.

When Yellowly arrived in Madison County in 1853, he purchased a parcel of property from a man named William J. Austin. The community that developed in this location was known as "Jessamine," in honor of Mrs. Yellowly. According to the U.S. Census Slave Schedule of 1860, J. B. Yellowly owned 110 slaves. This location in Madison County, known later as "Yellowly's Crossing," is now a portion of the City of Ridgeland, Mississippi. After the Illinois Central Railroad came through the area in 1865, the community was known as "Yellowly's Switch."

Later, Edward M. Treakle and Gorton W. Nichols purchased this land from Yellowly, along with some land from others, and established the "Highland Colony Co." After their purchase was surveyed and platted, a town hall was built, and the village around it was named "Ridgeland." One of the newer streets in Ridgeland is named "Yellowly Drive " as a reminder of the Yellowly family and its involvement in the formation of the town.

Jessamine Cemetery, located in the original community of Jessamine, and one of the many old cemeteries in Madison County, occupies a beautiful wooded area next to the Natchez Trace. The cemetery, which has an old and a new section, was once outside the city limits and at the end of a narrow dead-end road. After years of development around it, the cemetery, maintained by the city and better kept than ever, is surrounded on three sides by over a hundred homes all built within the last 20 years or so. It is in this cemetery that my parents, whose headstones are already in place, will be buried.

Ironically, Yellowly is not buried in Jessamine Cemetery, but in the cemetery at The Chapel of the Cross, along with his sister, Elizabeth, and another relative named Willie Yellowly. Although I have been unable to locate the grave for Yellowly's wife, I did find that a son, also named James B. Yellowly, who was born on October 7, 1848 and who died on June 6, 1914, is buried in Jessamine Cemetery. His wife, Sarah, born in Wisconsin, is buried there beside her husband.