The traditional image of a cemetery is quite different from many in Oglethorpe County, where families often buried their loved ones on their own land, sometimes unmarked.
These family gravesites are scattered throughout the county. One location has led to Lexington’s Don Davis becoming a gravekeeper.
When purchasing a plot of land on Buddy Faust Road, Davis was informed of a major challenge: there were three graves on the property.
He worked with the county to plan construction according to its guidelines.
Two of the three graves on Davis’ land are marked, but not identified by family, both being children approximately 1-year-old, with one remaining unidentified and unmarked.
Davis has placed a third, nameless tombstone over the plot in hopes that their identity will one day be discovered.
While building his house, Davis also took the initiative to reconstruct and preserve the gravesite, all with his own money and resources.
Davis said the process of clearing the trees and roots was the hardest part, which took approximately 10 months, starting in January 2022.
“We have big, old trees,” he said. “We had to cut them out … we had to grind out stumps.”
After clearing the land and placing mulch around the graves, the tombstones were in good condition, but Davis took an extra step. He built a surrounding wood wall with deep spikes in the earth, which will keep the site intact, Davis said.
He finally moved into his house in July 2023, with the refreshed cemetery just feet away from his front porch.
While it may seem like a rare occurrence, this was not Davis’ first time preserving a gravesite.
Davis’ great-grandfather, the Rev. William Cummins Davis, was an abolitionist born in 1760 in South Carolina.
Davis was buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in York, South Carolina, following his death in 1831. After walking through the cemetery, Davis was unable to find his ancestor’s gravesite, and right before he left, he discovered a buried grave marker by the exit that was nearly grown over by plants.
This marker happened to be his great-grandfather’s gravesite, which Davis then cleared off and preserved, giving him a proper tombstone.
Davis’ experience gave him a unique perspective when preserving the graves in his own yard.
“They've been there… about 125 years, and now, the way it's set up, in another 100 years, somebody could come by here and see it's been preserved,” Davis said. "You never know, just like in my case, I had no idea in my family that I had a great-grandfather that was really famous and has books written about it until I did the ancestry.”
Unmarked and lost graves are much more common than one might think.
Tom Gresham, president of Historic Oglethorpe County, said there hasn’t been a large amount of research surrounding unmarked graves in the county, but he has an estimate.
“There (are) about 468 cemeteries, and many of them … 20 or 30… we just call them unidentified,” Gresham said. “There (are) tombstones with no names. We don’t know who they are. We suspect some of them may be poor African-American church cemeteries — maybe some public cemeteries of poor people that couldn’t afford tombstones.”
Gresham urges anyone who might have gravesites on their land to take the initiative and preserve them, as well as inform him or members of Historic Oglethorpe County of their existence.
“I was real pleased to hear about Don Davis fixing up the cemetery,” Gresham said. “We encourage that. Don’t wait on somebody else to do it.”