By Wesley Harris
(Third in a series on Lincoln Parish cemeteries)
Over time, cemeteries can fade into the landscape, overtaken by nature as the elements slowly erode and topple gravestones. Neglect, urban development, and shifting populations can lead to the abandonment or disappearance of cemeteries.
These resting places hold historical and cultural significance, offering insights into past generations, their stories, and the communities they shaped. Preserving cemeteries is essential to honoring the dead, maintaining a connection to history, and safeguarding the legacies embedded within these sacred grounds, lest they be lost forever.
Dozens of cemeteries have been created in Lincoln Parish. Some are meticulously maintained while others have been forgotten. I recall storing recovered tombstones at our evidence room at the Ruston Police Department back in the 1980s. They had been dumped in a pile in Ruston, presumably the victim of commercial development.
Slave cemeteries lie around communities predating the Civil War but since graves were not usually marked, they are difficult to locate unless their use continued after emancipation.
The oldest marked grave in Lincoln Parish is in the Old Colvin Cemetery northeast of Vienna. Sometimes called the Katy Graveyard, it is named for Daniel Colvin’s second wife Katy, who survived so long after his death that the home and cemetery became known as Katy’s place and Katy Graveyard.
Daniel Colvin was one of the first white settlers to establish a homestead in what is now Lincoln Parish. And ever since there’s been an argument over who reached the area first – the Colvins, the Stows, the Pipes, or some other settler
When the cemetery was first documented in writing in 1949, researchers were told some of the markers had disappeared, and others were broken and scattered. Several were still standing in good condition.
The marked graves include Daniel Colvin and his wife Susan and also some of their children and grandchildren. The oldest grave is that of Sarah Colvin Johnson who died September 20, 1826. She was 24 years old.
The youngest with a marked grave is Sarah Ann Colvin, who died on her birthday on May 27, 1838, at the age of two.
The marker for David Colvin, buried in 1859, bears the epithet,
“Green be the turf above thee
Son of our early days
None knew thee but to love thee
None named thee but to praise.”
Over the decades, the Katy Graveyard has been lost to the underbrush and thick woods, only to be rescued and cleaned up, then lost to nature once again. In the late 1960s, a Girl Scout troop placed locally obtained rocks around the perimeter of the graveyard as a small effort in preserving history.
Sometime in that era, a woods fire swept over the area and left all the grave markers black. Family members spent many hours removing the soot. A low chain link fence was added at some point.
I last visited the Katy Graveyard in the mid-1980s. It was easy to access then, even to the point my 80-year-old grandmother accompanied me. Today, neighbors tell me the graveyard is nearly impossible to find and likely has suffered damage from logging operations.
A description of the Trussell Cemetery on La. Highway 544 was reported in “Lincoln Parish History,” a book prepared in 1976 for the American Bicentennial, to be “completely overgrown with brush and trees, abandoned and wild.” In more recent years, the cemetery was cleaned up and encircled by a picket fence. But time has ravaged the stones, with the lettering worn away on some. Markers are missing or toppled. The bronze marker for a husband and wife is said to have been removed and recycled for a World War II scrap drive. The couple’s graves were later replaced with flat, military-style granite stones to denote the husband’s Civil War service.
The “Lincoln Parish History” book lists several cemeteries as abandoned, including the Gullatt, Waldron, Thomas R. Colvin, May, Kelly, Terryville, and Ephesus Cemeteries, among others. The current status of these graveyards is unknown.
I visited Redwine Cemetery off Old State Road about 20 years ago. Moderately difficult to find, it included the graves of the Redwine family. In a later trip, I could not ascertain where to enter the woods to find Redwine but I’m sure it’s somewhere out there.
The first of the family in the area, Pierce Lovett Redwine, built a road from Redwine, or Woodville as it now appears on maps, to Calhoun to facilitate trade. His son William Eli Redwine served in the state legislature, as a judge, and as Lincoln Parish’s first school superintendent from 1876 to 1904. Eli himself is buried at the Wesley Chapel Cemetery along with other family members. Riser Cemetery and Wesley Chapel, both active cemeteries, became the preferred resting place for most of the Redwines.
The Lincoln Parish Library possesses several resources for researchers inquiring about local cemeteries. “Cemeteries of Lincoln Parish and a Few in Parishes near Lincoln,” “Cemetery Inscriptions of Lincoln Parish,” and “Cemtery Survey of Lincoln Parish through 1980” are available for use within the library.
The Louisiana Trust for Historic Preservation has built a database of roughly 8,500 historic cemeteries across the state and invites people to submit information about gravesites yet to be documented. One of the purposes of the database is to record history and protect cemeteries by documenting their importance. To submit information to the database, go to https://historic-cemeteries.lthp.org/.
Always check with the property owner before searching for a lost cemetery. Even family members of the departed with check in. And remember hunters are in the woods during certain times of the year.
Next week: Vienna Cemetery
