Today's photo features the graveyard that used to be beside Reynolds Chapel Missionary Baptist Church, before the church sold their original property to BP and moved the church up the road to Hibler Road (featured on GDP yesterday). After recently reading Margaret Moffett Banks' 1/10/2014 News & Record article about the cemetery in the church's previous location, we headed out to find it. On one side is the Wyndam Hotel and a chain link fence. The rest of the property has a wooden fence and there is no hint of an entrance. If you walk in the lane for the car wash at the BP, you will see a gate at the end, near the other car wash, the exotic car wash. While this isn't the best photo, we wanted you to see the orientation of the cemetery to the BP station and convenience store- note the green and white awning.
We were pleased to see that the cemetery is still being maintained and weeds no longer obscure the headstones. The marked graves are mostly from people who died in the 20th century and that the only people being buried at the cemetery are people who already had family there. If we read correctly, the most recent grave is from 2017 (Bertha Lee Pressley 1926-2017). It must have been hard getting the grave dug and a hearse brought into the cemetery in this landlocked 1/4 acre strip of land. The sanctuary has been gone for over thirty years, but the congregants continue to maintain this private cemetery. Now, if we were real detectives, we would attempt to settle the mystery Ms. Banks posed seven years ago. Where is Mary S. Means buries? Her husband Forrest has a double marker. Mary was born on May 20, 1901; either she was buried and a death date simply was not carved, or she was buried elsewhere. Hopefully, the Means family is satisfied with the solution.
Happy Monday!
Tucked away, it seems.
Posted by: William Kendall | Tuesday, July 13, 2021 at 06:05 PM