Breckinridge County KyArchives News.....Wales Cemetery Leads to Rediscovery October 6, 2021 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ky/kyfiles.html ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Dana Brown http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00005.html#0001067 February 3, 2022, 11:53 am The Herald News Newpaper October 6, 2021 WALES CEMETERY LEADS TO REDISCOVERY BY LESLIE GALLOWAY HAYCRAFT THE HERALD NEWS NEWSPAPER 10/6/2021 EDITION After Ginny Hamm had retired as a lawyer and her husband had passed, she decided to move back to her roots here in Breckinridge County. On the 42 acres she purchased Hamm had an architect design a historic style home which is set back in the field with a perfect view of her farm. There’s a long gravel road from the main highway and she had a sign made for the entry with the name “Three Bells Farm” for her property with a barn for her animals, and beautiful fences. Three Bells represent three sisters: Lucy, Ginny, and Leila. Little did she know the uncanny connections she would come to have with the land that she chose to purchase back in 2009. When I met Hamm a few years ago she asked me to do more research on Martin Wale, the original land grant owner, for a commission. I painted two large canvases of the plantation that now hang in her home. It was at that time that I wrote a version of the article recently published in The Herald-News for the Breckinridge County Historical Society monthly magazine. So now I too have a deep fascination with this particular piece of history. I’ll jog your mind – The Prince of Wales Plantation was so large that it spanned from what today we call Harned to Garfield. The name was changed to Garfield in about 1878 or 80, after President Garfield. Of course new home or land owners may know it is always exciting, as well as hard work, to begin preparing for anything that you want to do on a piece of property. She and her sister began to clean up one spot on the land near where they wanted to place the entry fence and sign. It was just a spot of weeds and brush that was an African-American cemetery they had been told about called “Wales Cemetery.” Ginny loved and respected history, so there was no doubt that this was going to be a priority for her to get in shape. As they cleared, the first stone found was the maternal grandparents of their cousin, Louise Moorman Hook. Soon after they saw a Dr. Ezra Harned tombstone – oh this struck a familiar memory also, they had heard stories about this doctor from their elders. Not only did they know these names, they were related! Mrs. Hook and Dr. Harned both were direct descendants to Martin Wale, who had the original land grant for Prince of Wales Plantation back around 1798. Hamm and her sister had started cleaning the cemetery and now had the genealogy of the original land owner and his descendants. What a can of wonderful worms! Eventually, there was a stone uncovered for Hopkins Otey Wale (Martin’s son), but not one for Martin. Hamm came to know Mason Cowell who was a descendant of the Wale family and had researched the history of the plantation. He had applied for a military stone for Martin Wale’s military service in the Revolutionary War, as well as the Battle of Tippecanoe, in which he died at the age of 81. A beautiful headstone was received and placed in the Wales Cemetery. Cowell’s research of the property was fascinating and he pointed out where the old homeplace was estimated to have been with slave cabins nearby. That plantation was huge and the stage coach station had been described as being on “Deadman’s Curve” as it is now called. Hamm was lucky enough to get land that had both the cemetery and original spot of the Wale homeplace. At what is now a border on one edge of Hamm’s property, Cowell pointed out that the fence line follows an old road bed that folks traveled from this area to Elizabethtown. There are also many unmarked stones in this cemetery, in fact, just big rocks a farmer might find in a field. If you have ever noticed these in very old cemeteries before, they are most often thought to be infants or slaves. My research did state that Wale came from Virginia with his family and several slaves to this property. It is a sad part of our history but these unmarked stones may be some of those men, women and children. The name of the cemetery is Wales with an S and the end, however the original name, Wale and founders, did not include the S. Wale is not a common last name in this area now and has faded away until Hamm who purchased this land became fascinated. The name WALES, however is still quite common in the Breckinridge County area. Wales family members possibly descended from the Wale slaves, thus the “s” from that era in American history. Additional Comments: Copied from original article, with permission from Leslie Galloway Haycraft (reporter) and the Herald News newspaper, from their 9/8/2021 edition. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ky/breckinridge/newspapers/walescem566gnw.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/kyfiles/