Roane County WV Archives Cemeteries.....The Beech Grove Graveyard - History of the Graveyard ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/wv/wvfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Tammy Anteau tanteau@charter.net June 27, 2012 at 5:08 PM [The Beech Grove Cemetery Transcription at http://files.usgwarchives.net/wv/roane/cemeteries/beechgrove.txt] The Beech Grove Graveyard I love the grey old Church, the long, low nave, The weird chancel, and the slender spire: No less, its shadow on each humble grave With growing myrtle hid, or living brier, I love those beech tree trunks, where stand arrayed So many deep cut names of youth and maid. Ingelow Between three and four miles up the Spencer Turnpike, above the village of Reedy, a lofty height, known locally as Kyger?s Mountain, rises high above the winding course of the Left Fork of Reedy. At the foot of this mountain upon a terrace and across the road from the creek, nestles a cozy brown beech wood and in the shadow of this wood is an ancient graveyard. By the side of a shallow dell many, many years ago was heaped the first rude mound of a new graveyard. Just how long ago, I may not guess, as there are no marks to show who sleeps here, nor where they were laid to rest. Toward the upper side are two shallow depressions, grown over with blue grass and myrtle. These were the graves of Bailey Cleavenger and his son Bailey Jr., a crippled boy, whose remains were removed to the Spencer Cemetery by the Grand Army of the Republic and friends. Bailey Cleavenger was born in 1821, November 7. He came from Barbour County to Roane several years before the war. In January 1862 he enlisted in Company C, eleventh Virginia Infantry. He was an outspoken Union man and made himself particularly obnoxious to the Confederates,he had often been threatened and they had come The regiment was at Parkersburg in September 1862. There appears to have been lax discipline as Cleavenger had gone to Harrison County and returned across country home. He had some money with him and must have walked, so he could not have been so near dead as some say. He crossed the river at Burning Springs and somewhere on the home side, was seized by the Guerillas and his money taken from him. This was the 19th of September. A boy brought him as far as the forks of the road at Kygers on a horse. The boy went on to Reedyville where there was a squad of Confederate soldiers encamped. That night a party of these soldiers came and called him out and taking him down the road, they shot him to death. In 1887 the Grand Army organized a post at Spencer and held memorial services at all the graveyards nearby where soldiers, whose friends were members of the post were buried. Among others, Cleavenger?s grave was decorated with flag and flowers. As Cleavenger?s was the only soldier grave at this cemetary, and five miles from the next nearest, it was thought best to remove his remains to the Spencer Graveyard, which was accordingly done. Mrs Cleavenger was a Miss Lydia McDonald of Barbour County. She was living at hte old home when I visited her in October 1904. On a rounded knoll in the adjoining fields is the new cemetery commenced about 1871 and now overflowing its bounds. I think the first grave was that of Mary Flesher Lee, died October 21, 1871 in her twenty-eighth year. She was a daughter of George and Sarah Conley Flesher and sister of Mrs. George Callow. The next, perhaps, was that of Betty Badgett Bord a girl who was raised on the Lewis Miller or Offut place across the creek from the graveyard. She was buried together with her twin babes on the third day of June 1773. She was, I should say, about twenty two or twenty three years old. I will make a digression to say that Euncie Fisher was born in Lewis County. She married Joseph Butcher, a son of John and Christena Alkire Butcher, all of Lewis County. Her father was George Fisher. Butcher died in 1844. A few years later , the widow married a Badgett and moved to Roane County in 1858 and perhaps , a year later bought the Lewis Miller Farm. Badgett died and is possibly buried at Old Beech Grove Wilson Butcher, one of the first children died and was buried at Old Beech Grove about 1867 perhaps. Joseph Anderson Butcher, another son was a dwarf and misshapen but intelligent. He taught a few private schools. Married and raised four children. He lived on the Hiram Chancey place on Middle Fork Reedy when he died about 1890 and is buried at the Roach Graveyard. Mrs. Eunice Badgett herself, is buried on a high knoll on the Spencer Carney Farm on the Middle Fork, which she bought after the war. She died May 21, 1890 and was probably about eighty or upwards. Her grave has been fenced in, but is all grown up with weeds and briers. To return to Beech Grove, George Flesher died August 9, 1878, age, eighty five years four months. His birthday being March 10, 1793. His wife, Sally Conley Flesher died about 1886. Her sister, was Polly Jarvis (?Pop Kendall?) and was burie here on the last day of 1873. John Flesher, son of George Flesher died January 6, 1877 age forty five years seven months. He died after a lingering illness and the day he was buried, the creek was too high to cross, so those of us who live on the other side gathered at the creek and remained through the ceremony. There was six or eight of us, I well remember the day. It had rained the night before and the yellow creek was rolling bank full and the ground was soaked with water, but the sun was shining brightly. The sky was a dazzling blue and everything wore the fresh new look nature assumes when the sun comes out bright after a heavy rain in the winter and spring. It was Sunday or I could not have been there, as I was teaching school about three or four miles from home. There is an old saying, that if there is a burying on Sunday, you will hear of another before the week is out. I do not know, now, if this proved true in this case or not. What looked like a bad omen and stirred the dormant superstition which still exists in the recess of most minds, be they ever os cultivated and progressive was the death on New Years Day 1880 of John C. Lester. He was buried on the following day by the ?grange? He was born February 14,1834 The prediction freely made that the year would be noted for the numerous burial at this place, was not verified, as this was the only one during the year. I do not think there used to be so many deaths as during the past fifteen years. What country cemetery is there now in use that has not its three or four or more new graves every year. A rather remarkable coincidence was the dual burying of Joseph Ball and a child, from a different neighborhood at the same hour, neither knowing of the other when the hour of burial was set. The date of this occurrence was March 29, 1877. Joe Ball was born in 1822 and was fifty years old. ( There is a mistake in either the age or date of birth, the former I should guess.) The child, Dora Vandale , was small. Two of Balls children are buried by him. They both went to school to me at Mount Pisgah. Andrew M. Ball was killed by a log rolling over him at a mill set near the forks of Wrights Run about 1886 or 1887. Another grave is that of Mrs Maggie Butcher, wife of N.L. Butcher, who died October 27, 1887 aged fifty years. Forrest-Fox-Gough, the young wife of Perry Gough, was buried here April10 or 11, 1878. (She died in the ninth). About March, 1885, Raleigh Kyger was buried here in the ? cow Pasture? graveyard. He was an old man when I first knew him and had lived on the farm of which the new Beech Grove Graveyard was a part, since before the war. The line between his land and that of his brother, Hugh Kyger crosse between the old and new burial grounds and ran up the face of Kyger?s Mountain. Raleigh had given his son George , a hundred acres of the upper end of the farm before I knew this country. The base line of the Claiborne and Morlen survey crossed about the graveyard, but the Kyger Farm reached to the Creek at this point. There is now a monument (1907) at the Kyger Graves on which is engraved R..M. Kyger, 1808 - 1885. Susan K. Kyger, 1819 -1906. The graves were overgrown with running briers and cattle ranged at will through the ? new? part of the cemetery which was enclosed in the field. When I visited the graves, there were withered bunches of flowers someone had laid on top of the briars, blue devil, golden rod, wild rye and tame flowers. Hugh Kyger was also buried here in March 1891. I visited the graveyard last fall, but could not locate either of the Kyger graves. There is a lot fenced with plank containing the graves of Downtain Smith and his sister Lula and several children of Charlie and Mary Smith Lester. Children and grandchildren of Elijah V. And Charity Smith, also of Albert Callow. George Callow, was born in Fauquier County , Virginia, October 26, 1822 and died September 19, 1904 was buried a few weeks before I was at the graveyard. In 1858 there was built in the western part of this grove, the Beech Grove Church and School House, of which I wrote in 1872 while it was yet standing. It stands in a pleasant grove just above the road, a mouldering monument of the past. It crumbles beneath each wave of time that carries us farther and farther away from the olden days. Once the busy feet of little children pattered up and down, over its floor or in the grassy yard, but now how deserted and forsaken it appears. The great wide mouth fireplace into which the master and big boys rolled the huge beechan backlog and piled high the flaming brands and round which children used to gather in the crispy mornings, has fallen in and where once the cheerful blaze did crackle on the hearth of the short , cold days of midwinter, now the white unbroken snow gathers in drifts. The walls that protected the inmates from the wind and cold are now an empty shell without windows and with wide gaping crevices between the logs. The mossy roof on which the elfin feet of autumn rains dance with measured beat, has fallen full of holes. The benches on which the children clustered, on whose boards the mischievous boys would surreptitiously carve their initials or strange figures, when the Master?s back was turned, have wholly disappeared. And the floor itself has mostly gone to cover the vaults in the neighboring graves. Some of the children who spent many happy hours at the old schoolhouse have again returned to this peaceful spot and moulder into oblivion and will be forgotten along with the old log school house, their Alma Mater. At some time , some one has pencilled on the casing of the door, the names of the girls attending the school, now only six remain. The others have been long since effaced, and indeed these are but indistinctly traced. I reproduce them are nearly like the original as possible: Martha S. Biogers, Margaret C. Murry, Mag E. Morris, Sarah F. Gough, Barlay E. Badgett. Carved on a beech tree at the foot of the hill above the corner of the house is the date ?A.D. 1859". On the wall be the fire place is the date of March 1 1858. Beech Grove is an emblem of the unpleasant lesson we must all learn: No matter how fondly we cherish a friend or a memory, like this school house, slowly but surely the friend is forgotten, the memory sinks into oblivion? (signed) J.A.H. ( John A House). When the above was written , I was a boy of eighteen, now I?m an old man of fifty. Then, there was one grave in the now graveyard. Now I count twenty four of my acquaintances and friends and I do not know how many others in the twenty years I have been away from the neighborhood o whom I have mahhap never even heard the names. The house was first built by the neighbors for a church and was, as was the custom of the old times, and it was old times on this side of the Ohio River until June 20, 1863 used as a schoolhouse. Beech Grove, said ?Lige? Smith, was built in 1858 ( it must have been a year earlier, George Kyger says it was three years earlier) for a church and used as a school house also, it was commenced by Protestants and United Brethren. The Methodist had commenced one at Chestnut Grove, but gave it up and joined with the others to build at the upper site. As nearly as I can recall, the house was about sixteen by twenty or twenty two feet. Not over seven feet from floor to floor and five rounds from sill to rib. The logs were mostly poplar, the ribs were round hickory and the roof of clapboards. The joist were round poles. There was a door of plank. A batten door with wooden latch and I think, wooden hinges, and there were, perhaps two small windows or half windows. The chimney was cribbed with split timber and with cat and clay stem. The floors were of plank, but there was but little of it left when I first knew the place. The sleepers and a part of the floor, were there and a carpet of brown leaves. The seats were of split puncheons and without back. Among those who preached within its walls were Sam Black, Joe Jenkins, /William Downtain and the local preachers, Adam Hodam, Sam Sheppard, and Jacob C. Smith.Some of the teachers were James O?Hara and wife . Henry Holbert and John Shed. There had been a new frame church agitated and under the pushing and pulling of Preacher Downtain, who hewed most of the timbers himself, the material for the frame was gotten on the ground, piled up and, Downtain having been transferred to another circuit rotted. Meetings had been transferred to Chestnut Grove when it was built in 1868 and were continued there until the new church was built in 1885. There was, during the war a skirmish in the pike by Beech Grove. An oak tree standing below the road is scarred with rifle ball.