Adams Family Cemetery

My father-in-law had described the location of the Adams Family Cemetery off of Cabin Creek Road in the Walnut Grove community of  Hays, NC. Since several collateral relatives are buried there, I had been planning to visit (when the snakes aren't crawling!)

I finally joined FindAGrave as a volunteer about 10 days ago, and lo and behold, received a request for a picture of Ambrose Adams' tombstone in the Adams Cemetery.

Equipped with my orange bucket of cemetery supplies, we visited the cemetery. The cemetery is in poor condition. There are four or five graves in this photo.

And more fieldstone markers are in this stand of young pine trees.  (I'm pointing to a fieldstone in the photo. See me?) Altogether, we counted about 20 graves. Most were either marked with stones with no writing, or were simply depressions that were obviously old burials. 

This was the only tombstone with visible markings. It appears to read:

MILLARD FOARD DID AUG THE 27, 1889

I was aware of several Foard/Ford families in the community in that era, but I don't know exactly who Millard was. If he was a child born between census years, there may be no other record of him unless his birth and death are recorded in a family Bible somewhere.  Without more information, such as a birth date, there's no way to know if Millard was a child or an adult.

Ambrose Adams was buried here in 1943, and my father-in-law doesn't remember any other burials that occurred after that. My father-in-law was a child when Ambrose passed away.

The current owner of the property says that Ambrose did not have a marker placed on his grave, only the metal marker placed by the funeral home.

The landowner also said that there were several graves with only metal markers. His description sounded like the markers were meant to be temporary, only lasting until a permanent marker could be placed. He remembered, possibly, 27 graves that could be identified in earlier years, with stones, metal markers, or depressions. We didn't find any metal markers, although there could have been one or more, buried under the leaves.

So the FindAGrave photo didn't happen. I did contact the person who made the request, who is a cousin of my husband that I have previously exchanged emails with.

It's so sad to see a cemetery fall into this state of disrepair.