By Drew C. Wilson, Wilson Times, 29 June 2018.
Brian Grawburg stops his pickup truck at the end of a farm path between an old hedgerow and a field off Radford Road.
“There it is,” Grawburg says, pointing to the underbrush where two flat marble headstones have come into view.
The 72-year-old retiree is on a search for hidden and overgrown cemeteries in Wilson County.
Grawburg erects a ladder in the bed of his truck, climbs up and points his camera at the graves. He makes a couple of pictures with a 1937 Leica rangefinder and climbs down to note the cemetery’s location with a modern GPS tracker.
These are the gravestones of Amos and Martha Newsome, husband and wife, who called Wilson County home in the late 1800s. A neighbor across the road had told Grawburg about the graveyard’s existence, and this was his second visit to the spot. Upon closer inspection, Grawburg notes the presence of another grave a few feet deeper into the woods.
Hidden behind a shield of Virginia creeper, smilax and scuppernong grape vines is a marble obelisk not quite waist-high. The face of the monument is clean and the inscription is clear.
“Edna Newsom, 1846 to 1913, Kind angels watch her sleeping dust.”
“It’s a very nice stone,” Grawburg comments. “That one we’re going to have to carefully look at.”
Despite the difference in the last name spelling, Grawburg wonders if Edna might be Amos’ mother, but he’s not sure.
“Martha died in 1902, and he’s 1919,” Grawburg said. “That is certainly where we will have to get more information.”
Grawburg says he can’t wait to tell Joan Howell that he has found another headstone.
MAKING A LIST
Joan Howell has compiled four books on Wilson County cemeteries. The first one was completed in 1993, and she is currently working on her fifth. All were projects supported by the Wilson County Genealogical Society with information supplied by the group’s members.
It is Howell’s work and old Work Progress Administration surveys from the 1930s that offer hints as to where Grawburg may find the forgotten cemeteries.
The Wilson resident will sometimes wear boots to protect his shins from snakes and ticks and take along clippers to cut back “vines from hell” as he calls them.
Grawburg is building a photographic record of deceased Wilson County residents.
He’s not interested in the cemeteries that are neatly kept. Those are the ones that are already well-known.
Grawburg is interested in finding the ones that have been overgrown and rest in little patches of woods in farm fields, at the edges of subdivisions, anywhere that Mother Nature has waged a battle to reclaim the plots.
“It doesn’t take long,” Grawburg said.
A cemetery can go from being well-maintained to overgrown in a matter of a few years.
“This is top priority because they are becoming nonexistent,” Howell said.
An example is the B. Ellis cemetery in a small plot hidden by trees and overgrowth that is unseen by passing traffic off Forest Hills Road in Wilson.
“There are 35 people in there, and you don’t know there is a single one in there,” Grawburg said. “That cemetery is right there.”
Grawburg said with 16 cemeteries Howell recently found and added to the list, there are about 260 known cemeteries in Wilson County.
There are estimates that there could be another couple of hundred cemeteries that are not documented in the county.
‘IT’S EXCITING’
At age 85 and after two hip replacements, Howell still puts on her “snake boots” and heads into the woods to search.
“It’s exciting,” Howell said. “I feel like I’m doing something worthwhile. Some people don’t know where their grandmothers and their grandfathers are. I just love doing this. I lament the fact that I am not as able as I once was.”
Grawburg and Howell will often meet in the genealogical room of the Wilson County Public Library to share notes. On Thursday, Howell spread out a United States Geological Survey topographical map with handwritten notations marking cemeteries that had been located.
“I don’t put anything on the map until I find the cemetery, and then I give it a name,” Howell said.
Howell said locating gravestones is vital to filling in Wilson County’s history.
“Death certificates didn’t begin to be recorded until 1913, and then they were spotty. So this is a means of recording people who might not have been noted elsewhere,” Howell said. “It is a way of preserving history and family information.”
Grawburg and Howell said there have been rare instances where farmers have driven implements over cemeteries, knocking over gravestones, and have even taken them away from the actual graves.
“That is distressing to me,” Grawburg said.
It is also a violation of state law, he added.
When Grawburg finds a grave, he wonders who the person was, how he ended up there and what he died from, particularly the children who are interred.
“Did they have scarlet fever? Did they have measles? I think about that,” Grawburg said. “Why did they die? Why so young?”
Grawburg traveled to upstate New York to locate his own relatives.
“I think about my reaction when I found my great-great-great-great-grandfather and you say, ‘Geez, I’m standing on the grave where we’re related.’ There is just something cool about that,” Grawburg said. “Not everybody sees that, but it is kind of neat to say that there’s a connection.”
Grawburg hopes that living Wilson County residents might have the same experience after their ancestors’ graves have been located.
He said there is the joy of saving somebody’s heritage regardless of the fact that he is not a relative.
“I don’t know Amos Newsome,” Grawburg said. “I don’t know anything about him. I don’t know any of his family. I have no connection to him whatsoever. None. Well, somebody does.”
Both Grawburg and Howell said tips from the public about the locations of lost cemeteries are valuable in the search.
“If they would show me where the cemeteries are, that would be helpful,” Howell said. “This is such a large project and I don’t know when we will ever get through with it.”
People interested in the project may contact Grawburg by email at archive@myglnc.com.
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Benjamin Newsome and Edna Newsome registered their 16-year cohabitation in Wilson County in 1866.
In the 1870 census of Cross Roads township, Wilson County: farmer Benjamin Newsom, 50; wife Edna, 31; and children Amos, 10, Gray, 18, Pennina, 16, Mary, 13, Louisa, 9, Larry, 7, and Joseph, 5.
In the 1880 census of Cross Roads township, Wilson County: farmer Benjamin Newsome, 53; wife Edna, 40; and children Oliver, 21, Amos, 19, Gray, 18, Penelope, 6, and Mary, 2.
On 23 December 1883, Amos Newsom, 23, married Martha Ann Barnes, 22, in Wilson County.
After Benjamin Newsome’s death in 1893, Edna Newsome applied for letters of administration for his estate. A Report of Commissioners valued his personal estate (excluding land) at $400. At his death, he had owned a safe; a bureau and its contents; four beds, [bed]steads and contents; another bed and bedstead; two trunks; a sewing machine; a table; a clock; eight chairs; a stove and contents; two more tables and contents; a lard stand; another safe and contents; a saw; three trays; two jugs; a jar; two pots; a tub; two buckets; one lot of corn (about 15 barrels); two stacks of fodder; two mules; one wagon and gear; one cart; farm tools; a barrel of syrup; two wheels; a loom; four bushels of pears; two bushels of wheat; nine hogs; 150 bushels of potatoes; 150 bushels of cotton seed; seven geese; 25 chickens; 500 pounds of tobacco; and 1200 pounds of seed cotton.
On 31 January 1900, Edna Newsome, 55, of Cross Roads, married Ishmael Wilder, 60, of Springhill township, at Newsome’s residence. W.H. Horton, “minister of the Christian denom.,” performed the ceremony in the presence of Grant Farmer, W.T. Barnes, and L.H. Newsome.
In the 1900 census of Cross Roads township, Wilson County: Ishmael Wilder, 63; wife Edney, 55; and daughter Clara, 26.
In the 1910 census of Cross Roads township, Wilson County: farmer Joseph L. Newsom, 34; wife Virginia L., 34; mother Edna, 65; and sister Mary E., 42.
In the 1910 census of Cross Roads township, Wilson County: farmer Amos Newsom, 55; [second] wife Frances, 30; and children Lena, 21, Mamie, 17, Mattie, 14, Linettie, 5, Clevland, 2, Willie, 20, and Albert, 18.
Amos Newsom died 8 June 1919 in Cross Roads township, Wilson County. Per his death certificate, he was born in 1859 in Wilson County to Benjamin and Edna Newsom of Wilson County; was married to Francis Newsom; owned his farm; and was buried in the “country.” Informant was Larry Newsome.
Image of estate document available at North Carolina Wills and Estates, 1665-1998 [database on-line], http://www.ancestry.com.
This was so interesting. I understand the feeling of connectedness of standing where ancestors are buried–even though I’ve never done that, I can imagine that. Thanks for sharing this story. And kudos to Mr. Grawburg for his tireless work.
Hello my name is Robin Peppers. I’m the great-granddaughter of Joesph Newsome that was 102 years old when died. I did a little research on our family history and saw the graveyard in Lucoma where a lot of the family graves are the graveyard is really overgrown. I would like to talk to you further about this. Would you please contact me.