The "Family" Cemetery

While we do not have a real family cemetery, I've always kind of thought of County Line Cemetery as a "family" cemetery. Situated next to County Line Baptist Church, it is located on the county line between Franklin and Williamson Counties, Illinois, and is sometimes known as Zion Grove Cemetery.

The church was founded in 1867, and the first burials at the cemetery were around 1870. They continue to this day. When I was younger, I would always go to southern Illinois (from Chicago) with my grandmother to visit and put flowers on the graves. I didn't pay too much attention at the time, and now I wish I had. I suspect my grandmother could have told me many stories about people who were buried there. 

Both my grandmother and her husband are buried there. I always thought it was odd that my grandmother's name was engraved on the stone - long before she died. It was something I didn't understand as a child. The monument is more elaborate than I expected from my grandmother. She was always a plain, practical woman, but she obviously splurged when setting up the grave marker for my grandfather. 

Looking through the names of graves listed on Find a Grave (587 of them, which is likely most of the graves), I recognize name after name — either as a relative, a collateral relative who married into the family, or friends and neighbors of the family. These include:

• Armes
• Beasley (by marriage)
• Blades (neighbors)
• Cardwell (by marriage)
• Davenport (by marriage)
• Edwards (including uncles, aunts, cousins, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, 3rd and 4th great-grandparents, etc.)
• Finney (by marriage)
• Fletcher (by marriage and neighbors)
• Jordan (by marriage)
• King (by marriage)
• Parker (by marriage)
• Plaster
• Pritchard (neighbors)
• Rains (cousins, uncles, aunts, and some great-grandparents, etc.)
• Rotramel (by marriage and neighbors)
• Smith (by marriage)
• Striplin (by marriage)
• Summers (by marriage)

These names were selected through a brief review of the burials posted on Find a Grave. But I suspect that more than half of the people buried there have some kind of relationship to my family. And that's why I've always considered it the family cemetery. 

This week's #52Ancestors prompt is Cemetery.