Cemeteries

I have a fascination with cemeteries, especially old cemetaries.  I don't know why.  Perhaps it's the history.  Perhaps, it's because many can be found in strange places like this cemetery that lies beside an old Win Dixie store now a gym.

I did a little research and found some information about the family buried here.

Mary Hawkins, wife of Wesley Perry Taylor, was born 16 Sept 1843, daughter of Silas Raglin Hawkins and Nancy McClimons, in a log house near Greer SC. She and Wesley Taylor were married August 9, 1860 by the Rev. Ludwell Vaughn. They were living in a three room house which Wesley had built of logs, on the Greenville Road about a mile from where the Pleasant Grove Church is now. Wesley joined the Confederate Army in 1861 , serving as Commissary Sergeant his first two years in the PBLA, and was able to procure salt and other hard to find items for Mary.


Mary continued to live in their house until bands of marauders roaming the countryside made it dangerous for her to stay there alone with her infant son. She went home to her mother for the last two years of the War. Wesley and Mary Taylor’s daughter Nannie Taylor Moon writes that when word came that Sherman’s scouts were scouring the state, the Hawkins family took their horses and silver deep into the pine forest about a mile from the house and hid it. When the soldiers did come, they took everything in sight; all the meat out of the smoke house, all the turkeys, chickens and geese. The horses and silver and other valuables were safe and later recovered.


When Wesley returned from the War they moved back into their home on the Greenville Road. Mary Hawkins Taylor later told of an incident that occurred just after the war. She was driving home from her mothers’ house through a patch of woods and a hooded figure on a horse rode up to the side of the wagon and uttered a most unearthly scream and disappeared on a wooded side road. Mary was scared out of her wits, having her two children, one an infant, with her at the time. Mary Hawkins Taylor died 10 April 1911 and is buried at Pleasant Grove beside her husband.

Jesse Hawkins is Silas' father.  Jesse was married twice.  His last wife Patsy Ragland, Silas' mother, is buried next to him. I couldn't read the headstones of the others buried here as they were too worn.