I met up with Britt Edwards last week to explore the Alex and Gracy Williamson cemetery more closely. Someone is taking good care of this graveyard, and I thank them for it.
Looking west toward the tobacco barn, which is still in pretty good shape.
This enormous white oak surely is a witness tree, offering shade to the earliest enslaved people buried in this cemetery.
Britt standing outside the old fence line. The posts are eastern red cedar and are many decades old.
The tobacco barn.
Hanging poles inside the barn.
The old flue.
Isaac Renfrow’s grave marker.
Hand-hewn fieldstone head and foot markers.
A small child’s grave marker.
With a little help from Britt’s phone flashlight, we were able to decipher that this hand-cut and -engraved marker is for a child who was born in 1912 and died in 1913. The child’s surname was Williamson, and my best decipherment of his(?) first name is THOMAS. The child died just a year before death certificates were required in Wilson County, and I have not been able to identify him with certainty.
Carved wooden grave marker.
I don’t know how I missed this tiny cedar grave marker on earlier visits. It is weathered and encrusted with lichen, but quite solid. There are no visible engravings. How old is this marker?
Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, October 2025.
