LYNCHBURG COUNTY, VA - CEMETERIES – Bransford Vawter Grave
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Source: Library of Virginia Digital Collection


LVA Titled Files: Survey Report, The grave of Bransford Vawter:
                  1937 Oct. 19
                  Research made by Susan R. Beardsworth

Cemetery Location:  City Cemetery, formerly called Methodist Cemetery
                    Lynchburg County, Virginia


DATE:

Vawter was born in Lynchburg in 1815; died in 1838.

OWNERS:

City of Lynchburg.

DESCRIPTION:

On October 14, 1936, during the Sesqui-centennial celebration a simple marker 
was placed at the grave of this young man by the Lynchburg chapter of the Quill 
and Scroll Society.

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE:

On January 7, 1811, Benjamin Vawter was married to Milly Gutrey.  These were the 
parents of this brilliant young man who had the promise of a career in the field 
of literature, but because of his frail physique, doubtless died of lung 
trouble, at the age of twenty-three.

“The Grave of Bransford Vawter”

The following poem was written by Mrs. Cornelia J. M. Jordan, first society 
editor of Lynchburg; her first work was for the press under a non de plume.


It was a spot he would have loved, by pleasing landscape bounded,
Fair verdant slopes, and distant hills, and blooming fields surrounded;
No fitter couch could loving hands have chosen for this sleeping,
Then here where kindly nature holds his dust in silent keeping.

No sound of earth, no rush of storm, or note of bird may move his;
The mountains fling their shadows broad, the blue skies smile above him;
No restless dreams obtruding come his lonely pillow haunting.
No river that his childhood loved his requiem now is chanting.

We may not know, we only hear, how much fate denied his,
We only see the mantling sod and daisies white that hide him;
The music of his broken harp floats in the pine trees singing,
And sends its plaintive echoes o’er the grave where he is lying.

Bransford Vawter’s father left several pieces of property, records of which are 
on file at the Lynchburg Clerk’s Office.  There is a record of the marriage of 
his son, Silas Vawter to Sarah Fear, in 1830.  The name, however, is now extinct 
in Lynchburg.

A house still stands on Polk Street, near fifth, is said to be the one in which 
the young poet died.


SOURCES OF INFORMATION:

Register of Marriages, page 2, Lynchburg Clerk’s Office.
Register of Marriages, page 7, Lynchburg Clerk’s Office.
Lynchburg Newspapers and Editors by Carter Glass, Jr., Lynchburg, Va.
Records of Duiguids’ Mortuary, Lynchburg, Va.
Lynchburg and its People by Christian, Jones Library, Lynchburg, Va.

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	This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives 
	by:  Joan Renfrow

	NOTICE:  I have no relationship or further information in 
	regards to this family.
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