Wordless Wednesday - Forest Grove Cemetery, Leake County, Mississippi

Entrance to Forest Grove Cemetery, Leake County, MS

Rocky Point Cemetery - Leake County, Mississippi

Rocky Point Cemetery, located in rural Leake County, Mississippi, contains almost one thousand graves. Adjacent to Rocky Point Baptist Church, the cemetery is near the intersection of Rocky Creek Road and Coon Creek Road. Although it was established in the mid-1800s and has many old gravesites, the cemetery contains newer graves, as well. Among those buried here are members of the Atkison, Atkinson, Bobo, Cheatwood, Cockroft, Crowe, Dendy, Durill, Horn, Laney, Lovorn, Paramore, Pickle, Swales, Tolleson, Vines, and Vowell families.

Manda and Maggie, Wives of George F. Halford

This is a followup post to a post that appeared as Tombstone Tuesday on January 19, 2009. The triple tombstone pictured here is located in Cedar Grove Cemetery in Leake County, Mississippi, and it marks the burial places of George F. Halford and his two wives, Amanda B. Boutwell Halford and Margaret F. Nash Halford. In today's post, I have attempted to piece together the story of how these three lives and those of their children intertwined.

According to his tombstone, George F. Halford was born on April 3, 1858 in Mississippi. George's date of birth is validated by the U. S. Census of 1860, taken in Leake County, Mississippi, where George, age 2, was enumerated in the household of his parents, Owen Halford and Nice J. Halford. The post office address for the Halford family was shown as Carthage, Mississippi. According to the census, Owen, a farmer, was born in North Carolina around 1807, and in 1860, he owned real estate and personal property valued at $800. Also living in the Halford household were George's brother, Lemuel, age 13, and his three sisters named Nancey, 16, Frances 6, and Elizabeth, 3. All children were born in Mississippi." The age difference between Owen and Nice, along with a gap of over 6 years between the ages of Lemuel and Frances, raises a question of whether George's marriage to Nice may have been a second one. The census record, however, shows "Halford" as the surname for all children enumerated.

When I searched the U. S. Census of 1870, I found George F. Halford enumerated as an unmarried, white male aged 22, residing in the household of Rachel McKay in adjacent Madison County. He was not shown as a "direct relative" of Mrs. McKay, and his occupation was "farmer." Also enumerated in the McKay household was George Ramber, a farm laborer. Although Mrs. McKay may have been George's grandmother or an aunt, I found no information to establish that a blood relationship existed between the two.

I was unable to locate George F. Halford on the U. S. Census again until 1900, when I found his family enumerated in the Good Hope Community of Leake County, Mississippi. George, then 42, was shown to be living with his wife of 18 years, Manda, age 38, along with their six children, Mirtle, 16, Katie, 12, Thomas, 10, Hallie, 6, Edker, 4, and Colant, 2. It is likely that George and Manda lost a child between the births of Mirtle and Katie, as the census shows that Manda had 7 pregnancies and only 6 live births. According to her gravestone, Amanda ("Manda") B. Boutwell Halford died on May 26, 1904.

A review of the U. S. Census of 1910 shows that George, then 52 years old, was already married to Margaret, who was enumerated as "Maggie," aged 26, and they were living in Leake County. Children in the household were Tom, 20, Hal, 18, Edgar, 15, and Cullen, 12. In addition, there were three children born during George's marriage to Maggie, Owen, 4, Henry, 3, and Andrew, 2.

Twenty years later, in 1930, George and Maggie, now 73 and 45 years old, respectively, were still living in Leake County, Mississippi. Also enumerated in the household were seven of their children, Henry, 22, and six other children born between 1910 and 1930, Jack, 21, Enda, 16, Mabel, 13, Frank, 11, Fannie, 8, and Leona, 6.

George F. Halford died on January 17, 1940. Margaret F. Nash Halford, "Maggie" to her family, born on May 12, 1882, died on July 23, 1958. George was married over fifty years to the two women in his life, "Manda" and "Maggie," and both had helped raise George's children from a previous marriage, as well as children born to each of them during their own marriage to George. It seems only fitting that all three people, George, Manda, and Maggie, would be linked together, even after death, by this unusual triple gravestone.

Ebenezer Cemetery, Edinburg, Mississippi

Ebenezer Cemetery, located near Edinburg, in Leake County, Mississippi was established in 1800. Within the boundaries of this old, sprawling cemetery, hundreds of early Leake County settlers with Scotch-Irish ancestry are buried. Posted here are some of the surnames to be found in Ebenezer Cemetery: Allen, Brooks, Carter, Chamblee, Donald, Fairchild, Hogue, Jolly, King, Logan, McPhail, Moore, Peoples, Rhodes, Sikes, Tolbert, and Wiggins. Wilcher, and Withers.

The Mystery of Mary Vanarsdale

This gravestone in Good Hope Baptist Church's Cemetery touched me when I saw it, primarily because of the little lamb gracing the stone's top. At first glance, before I read the dates of birth and death for Mary Vanarsdale, I thought the person buried there might have been a child. I looked for another Vanarsdale family member in the cemetery, but Mary apparently was the only family member buried there. Since the name Vanarsdale was not a common name in Attala County in the 1800's, I decided to see what I could find out about this family.

First, I searched the U. S. Census Records for 1850 and found the only family by this name living in Mississippi was the household enumerated in Beat 3 of Leake County. The head of this household was "L Vanarsdale," born in Kentucky. Leake County, as the crow flies, is not many miles away from Attala County, so I was optimistic that I might have found Mary's family. I became less optimistic when I found that Mary, a 16-year old daughter enumerated in the household, could not have been Mary buried at Good Hope, whose birth date was shown as 1852. I also reviewed the Slave Schedule for 1850 and found that L. Vanarsdale owned 16 slaves. The U. S. Census record taken in 1860 again showed this family still living in the same location, and L. Vanarsdale now owned 26 slaves.

I continued to search the U.S. Census recorded for 1870, 1880, and 1900. First, I found that "L. Vanarsdale" was actually "Lucas Vanarsdale," and his descendants continued for over half a century to live near Carthage, in Leake County. When I examined the U. S. Census for 1870, I also found two Vanarsdale families living near Newport, in Attala County, very near the Good Hope Cemetery. One household was headed by "Drue" Vanarsdale, whose 20-year old wife was named "Mary." A one-year old daughter, Maria, also resided in that household. The racial identity of all individuals enumerated in the two Vanarsdale households living in Attala County in 1870 was shown as "B," a census abbreviation meaning "Black." By 1900, that same family had grown to include a total of 6 children, and they were living in Madison County, in the Camden Community, where Good Hope Baptist Church is actually located.

Was Mary Vanarsdale, the wife of Drue Vanarsdale, the same Mary who is buried in the grave at Good Hope Cemetery? Or was she the wife of another Vanarsdale male, who for some other reason was buried in another cemetery?
Maybe someone who reads this can help solve the mystery of Mary Vanarsdale.