Ancestral interest in the Reeves and Joneses of Butts and Troup Counties, Georgia respectively. My children are also descendants of the Blackwoods and Fords, lately of Talladega County, Alabama.

Talladega County was formed after the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and Treaty of Cusseta in 1832. Antebellum planters and Victorian era (1837-1901) farmers often had burial plots on their own land. Authors of published county cemetery records, Carolyn Lane Luttrell and Joseph W. & Francis S. Upchurch, observed decades ago that gravestones had "...disappeared through erosion of time, vandalism, and bulldozers". Pioneer church/family consecrated ground lay fallow after congregations/families moved. Such has been the fate of the Salem Baptist Church, Fort Williams, Oden Family, Nix, Reynolds, Townsend-McClellan, Williamson-Hall, Brock-Cochran, and Brown-Freeman Family burial sites. As said of the Marble Springs Church cemetery by E. Grace Jemison in "Historic Tales of Talladega", published in 1959, "There are now only a few people who have so much as a memory of the once sacred spot".

The Alabama Maintenance of Abandoned Cemeteries Act (2007-408) allows access to grave sites by family and researchers who provide reasonable notice to property owners. The Alabama Monument Act (2017-60) prohibits removal of monuments emplaced forty or more years on public land. State criminal law categorizes defacement and/or removal of gravestones as misdemeanors.

Early headstones of marble may bear a quarry name such as Herd Brothers or Richard Miller, the first quarriers in the county. In 1845 Dr. Edward Gantt purchased the Sylacauga quarry subsequently named after him from John Herd. A 4' by 2' block of marble, marked "J. M. N. B. Nix & Co., Wetumpka, Ala.", was placed in the Washington Monument in Washington D.C. in 1851. Nix's Quarry, "Mariesville Marble Quarry", was a mile east of Sycamore on Old Sycamore Road. An "A. Herd & Bros." invoice from 1855 reflects the cost of a 6 1/2' by 3' marble slab to have been $35, with clasped hands sculpted for $5 and letters cut at 5 cents apiece, for a total cost of $56.10 due within a year. Historian Kenneth M. Stampp recounted the annual wage of textile workers in the South during 1860 to have only been $145. After the death of the eldest Herd brother, George, in 1855 their business in Winterboro went to "H. P. Oden & Co.". Captain H. P. Oden died at Vicksburg in 1863. Quarry/stone mason marks during Reconstruction were few, some "J. A. Bergin, Talladega, Ala." and "J. T. Nix & Co., Hopkinsville, Ky."

Sandstone from local quarries, such as at S. M. Jemison's farm on Kelly Creek, was commercially used for headstones and obelisks from 1840 until about 1915. Sunnyside Cemetery and the old sections of Oak Hill and Bethlehem Methodist Church cemeteries have family plots composed primarily of period sandstone markers. The Wilson Family Cemetery and Sunnyside (Jemison) Cemetery are 'gardens of stone' enclosed within large sandstone block walls, with "1862" chiseled onto an entrance pillar of the latter. Fieldstone and flagstone markers, some with etched names, are in rural and urban plots. Cast zinc and iron markers were used in the late Victorian era. Cement slabs and stones have been in common use since the 1890's, which when whitewashed provided an ersatz marble. Oakhill Cemetery in Talladega has many individual and family group cement curbed gravesites with molded names and relevant dates within its seven "Old" & "Old C" map sections.

African-American headstones from the Victorian era are rarely encountered, only a dozen or so at the three public cemeteries, Oakhill, Westview, and McClellan (Knoxville), within the city of Talladega. Marble headstones were provided from 1914 thru 1931 to members of the Mosaic Templars of America (MTA), a black fraternal organization with members in half the states of the nation. Many of these MTA members, formed in local "Chambers", had endured slavery and witnessed emancipation. Chamber stones had rounded, forward sloping tops with "M", "T", "A", and "3V's" encircled within crossed shepherd staffs in relief upon their upper face. Shepherd staffs symbolized the Exodus out of bondage led by Moses and Aaron, with "3V's" for "Veni, Vedi, Veci"; I Came, I Saw, I Conquered. During the 1930's the effects of the Great Depression led the MTA to cease operations.

Those insured from 1890 thru 1930 by the Woodmen of the World (WOW) Life Insurance Society received marble tree stump gravestones about 4'-5' in height. Initially free to WOW policy holders, by 1900 a $100 rider was required to cover their expense. The WOW logo, ivy, and axes were sculpted onto the stone trees. The monuments are also seen with sawn and stacked logs. Scrolls with names are often depicted, hung on ropes or attached to the trees, and "Dum Tacet Clamet"; Though Silent, He Speaks. These sculpted stones were also discontinued during the Great Depression due to their cost.

Cenotaphs are memorials in honor of deceased who lie elsewhere, such as the seventy-five Veterans Affairs (VA) stones at Ft. Williams Military Memorial Park. The April-May 1926 edition of "Arrow Points" noted the chartering of the Fort Williams Memorial Association "... to do honor to the Tennesseans long buried at old Ft. Williams on the Coosa [River]". This was a dozen years after construction of Lay Dam downriver of the fort at the mouth of Cedar Creek, with its "burial pits arranged in rows". Cherokee Indian allies of the Tennesseans were also buried there. In 1929 the Andrew Jackson Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (D.A.R.) voted to purchase an acre of land at 'Old Ft. Williams', and an inscribed 12-Ton marble boulder and VA headstones for eighty soldiers were placed at the site during 1932-1937. In 1976 it was added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks. Nevertheless, in 2006 land developers said the cemetery was devoid of graves and "an eyesore". Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) scans and trenching did indeed fail to disclose bones beneath the stones, which were then moved to allow construction of lakehouses with docks on Lay Lake.

Skeletal remains of soldiers are actually beneath the "Battle of Talladega" ('Jackson Pyramid') monument at Oak Hill Cemetery. Half the remains of almost a score of Tennessee volunteers slain, which included two wounded who subsequently died while enroute to Fort Strother, were recovered from their burial pit at the Fort Lashley (Leslie) site in Talladega and reinterred there in 1900 by the Andrew Jackson Chapter of the DAR. Sixty-four "Unknown Confederate Soldier" VA stones placed at Oak Hill Cemetery in 1932 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) also mark the burial places of soldiers, although they weren't unknown at the time of their deaths. Soldiers who died in the local hospital or conscript camp were buried with wooden markers identifying them, but these deteriorated in time until those beneath were 'Known but to God'.

Earthen interment or mausoleum entombment of embalmed deceased is no longer the cultural norm in our society. National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) data reflects cremation rates rose from 3.5% to 50% during the past half-century, with over one-third of Alabamians in 2021 having chosen 'ashes to ashes' and a columbarium or other location to 'Requiescat In Pace'.

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Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;

But you shall shine more bright in these contents

Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time.

Sonnet 55

Wm. Shakespeare (1564-1616)

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