Tombstone Tuesday - Wigley Family Tombstone - Coxburg Cemetery

Source:  Digital Photography Collection, 2009-2010; privately owned by J. Tracy

Wigley Family Tombstone
Coxburg Cemetery
Coxburg (Holmes County) Mississippi

This large tombstone marks the burial places of Wigley family members who were killed in a tragic automobile accident that occurred in mid-1927.

Sunday's Poem - "Dear Ancestor"

Dear Ancestor

Your tombstone stands among the rest, 

Neglected and alone.

The name and date are chiseled out

On polished, marbled stone.

It reaches out to all who care

It is too late to mourn. 

You did not know that I exist,

You died and I was born.

Yet each of us are cells of you

In flesh and blood and bone.

Our blood contracts and beats a pulse

Entirely not our own.

Dear Ancestor, the place you filled

One hundred years ago

Spreads out among the ones you left

Who would have loved you so.

I wonder if you lived and loved,

I wonder if you knew

That someday I would find this spot

And come to visit you.

- Author Unknown

Tombstone Tuesday - Helen Loveless Steffner, Brandon Cemetery, Brandon, Mississippi

Photograph by Natalie Maynor


Grave Monument Marking the Grave of Helen Loveless Steffner

Born December 20, 1882
Died July 12, 1904
Buried in Brandon Cemetery
Brandon (Rankin County) Mississippi

Harland's Creek Cemetery, Holmes County, Mississippi

Photo by Natalie Maynor

Harland's Creek Cemetery
Holmes County, Mississippi

Recently, on Mississippi Memories, I wrote about the family of Robert W. Ragland, of Hinds, Attala, and Holmes Counties.  Robert, the son of John W. Ragland and Elizabeth Smith Ragland, is buried in Harland's Creek Cemetery, pictured here.  Also buried in the cemetery are Robert's son, William Turner Ragland, and his wife, Sarah Frances Killebrew Ragland.  Among others buried in this old cemetery near Coxburg, Mississippi, are members of the Able/Ables, Abernathy, Burrell, Callihan, Chisolm, Chunn, Garrard, Harthcock, Hocutt, Killebrew, Robert, Rogers, Stewart, Thrasher, Tidwell, Wilkes, and Winpigler families.

Wordless Wednesday - McKinley Carr's Grave Monument

McKinley Carr
Feb. 9, 1897 - Feb. 8, 1974
Buffalo Cemetery
Kosciusko, Mississippi

Tombstone Tuesday - Arthur Dromgoole, Palestine Cemetery, Hinds County, Mississippi

Arthur Dromgoole
Born January 7, 1851
Died Feb. 16, 1857

Young Arthur Dromgoole, who died shortly after his 6th birthday, was the son of James J. Dromgoole and Eliza Ragland Dromgoole.  His mother was the sister of my third great-grandmother, Winiford Ragland Branch. For more information about Eliza and Winiford Ragland and other members of the Ragland family, visit my other blog, Mississippi Memories.

Children of Stirling Kirkpatrick White and Mary Willis White

Mary Austin Willis was the only child of Julia Ragland Willis, my paternal great-great-great-grandmother's sister, and her second husband, Andrew Jackson Willis, whom she married in 1869. When she grew up, Mary Austin Willis married Stirling Kirkpatrick White. During her marriage to Stirling White, Mary Willis White gave birth to three daughters who died while they were still very young children. Reminders of the White family's sad story of tragedy and loss can be seen in Raymond Cemetery in Raymond, Mississippi, where the grave stones of the three children are located in the Gillespie Plot. These three children were younger sisters of Mary Elise White, who was born on July 4, 1891.

Norma White
Born August 3, 1900
Died April 5, 1901

Minnie Lee White
September 25, 1892
Died April 30, 1893

Stirling Willis White
August 14, 1896
August 19, 1901