R.I.P. Original George

Cemeteries are by folklore creepy places. In a cemetery you’re the closest to the “other side of glory” as one can get on this earth. Every child knows spook houses are filled with former residents of the cemetery.

I remember once visiting my father’s grave in Zephyr, Tx at night on a trip from somewhere to anywhere. Zephyr Cemetery is, by definition, a place on the way to somewhere else. You can get to Heaven, Hell or Brownwood by passing through Zephyr Cemetery.

I was into my 30s when I stopped to visit Lawrence O. Hallmark in his final resting place that night. I admit I was a little creeped out wandering around by headlight looking at headstones. It was a feeling of being really alone but not really by yourself. I finally found the headstone with his and mother’s name though she was still living at the time and felt better after visiting with Daddy awhile. As I departed, I knew most of this was my active imagination. A good percentage of the people buried there were relatives, some of which I had known as a child, and meant me no harm. Yet as I drove off, I still got a shiver as Zephyr Cemetery faded in my rear view.

So how would you like a cemetery next door?

Hobbs Cemetery in Huntsville, Al is the final resting place of Original George Hallmark and the conclusion of our quest to find his grave. I was surprised to see Original George has live neighbors as the cemetery sits right in the middle of a subdivision.

This is the final resting place for Original George as close as anyone can calculate but it wasn’t his first grave. He was originally buried in a cemetery on the edge of his own property, which was about a half mile from the Hobbs’ family plot. George’s remains were moved to Hobb’s Cemetery in the 1970s when the subdivision was built to allow for the Manifest Destiny expansion of Huntsville.

I knew of the transfer, but I pictured there being a little more greenway between the houses and the haunts. The houses on either side are so close to the fence of the cemetery a spook can almost trick or treat on Halloween without leaving his or her RIP spot. Turns out the greenway, or rather greenery, was all in the Hobbs Cemetery.

Hobbs Cemetery is in crying need of an Eagle Scout project. A prospective Eagle Scout with his dad’s Weedeater could make a real contribution to the community. The cemetery is stark contrast to the manicured lawns of the middle-class suburb that has grown up around it.

Hobbs Cemetery has a green picket fence surrounding a loose stacked rock wall. The picket fence was probably never white but the green comes from the mold and other fauna clinging to the wood. Inside, there are even more vines and brambles growing to obscure the resting place of the Hobbses and the Hallmarks and whoever else the developers have rounded up. There are about 20+ names on the sign with James Fennell and John and Keziah Fennell Hobbs listed as the oldest people in the graveyard, circa 1780 births. The sign proclaims James Fennell’s as the oldest tombstone in the county.

Original George Hallmark’s name doesn’t appear on the sign though his birth in 1742 would make him most likely the oldest person there. But he’s a recent Manifest Destiny addition and his grave seeking descendants must take on faith their origin remains actually rest there under the marker with his name.

The marker is in the right front of the cemetery and after clearing away the creeping vines and ground cover his name is displayed prominently without the many marks of age that mar James Fennell’s. George’s is obviously from this century and not his own. The marker reads “George Hallmark Sr, VA Militia Revolutionary War, 1742-1815, Actual Year of Death ranges from 1812-1815”.

The marker for Original George itself is controversial beyond being a stone come lately. That’s because it’s inaccurate. Original George never served in the Virginia Militia or the Revolutionary Army. He was a patriot and sold horses to the army on faith since money wasn’t “worth a Continental” in those days. He eventually got paid by land in what became Tennessee because he backed the winning side. But he was no soldier.

Coy Hallmark, a Huntsville Methodist minister and far distant cousin pictured with me in the photo clearing the stone, related the story. He and a James Hallmark from Texas, who is no relations to my brother Jimmy or our branch of the family, located George’s resting place back in the late 1990s. James applied for the marker with a Revolutionary War historical association, who supplied the marker free. Evidently the facts were stretched to qualify for the free part.

This bit of larceny did not sit well with Gloria Johnson, another Hallmark descendant, who lives in Houston and has written the most complete history of Original George’s life. Coy called her on his cell from the cemetery and put her on speaker. She gave us an earful about the marker fraud and ended with the declaration, “If James would have let me know what he was doing I’d have paid for the stone myself.”

We spent a little more time at the marker, buoyed by seeing the name even if the rest of the story was false. We had found Original George, or at least a stone with his name on it. Cousin James Davis had visited the church in England where Original was born and now he has seen his resting place. What came in between was quite a life made clearer by the efforts of loving descendants like Gloria Johnson.

As I drove back to Lebanon, TN I speculated about my own final resting place. I know there isn’t a lie that can be told big enough to get anyone to pay for my stone. The bigger question is … where?

My family is buried in Zephyr, which my wife says is the loneliest cemetery in America. That’s just her way of saying as a girl born in the lushness of Pennsylvania she’s not being buried among the burnt grass, stickers and cactus of central West Texas. Her family is buried on a green hillside in New Castle, PA, but since I can’t be buried above the Mason-Dixon line we obviously have some issues to work out.

When I was a bachelor I romantically said I wanted to be cremated and have my ashes set free on the wind over the Devil’s Backbone Ridge near Wimberly, Tx. There are reported to be ghosts of Conquistadors, Indians, Cowboys and soldiers wandering through that region. Good company.

But I’m a bachelor no longer. If Jan can’t be buried in Zephyr and I can’t be buried in Yankeeland then we’ll probably end up in a compromising position as a final resting place. Maybe Lebanon. “Lebnun” as the locals pronounce it as no word is more than two syllables in Tennessee.

Heaven, Hell or Lebnun! That has a nice ring and in 200 years nobody will care anyway. They might need our resting place for a spaceport or something. If so, then like Original George, I guess we’ll move on.