Read on to learn about the following:

• Goals of the Friends of Myers Cemetery
   
• Historic Cemeteries--an Unrenewable Resource
   
• History of Myers Cemetery
   
• The Situation Today

In 1999, Myers Cemetery celebrated its sesquacentennial anniversary!

Cemeteries have been called "an unrenewable resource". Old cemeteries provide a tangible link for the living to people in the community who made history, whether ordinary individuals or famous people. Often their headstones tell us not only their names, dates of birth and death, and place of origin, but also their occupations, military service, personal traits their relatives held dear, and the names of relatives. These inscriptions instruct us about local, medical, and material history, cultural geography, historical archaeology, folklore, genealogy, and much more.

Older cemeteries demonstrate their value as a cultural heritage resource in different ways. They have aptly been called outdoor classrooms. For students of all ages they offer endless possibilities for continuing education involving both natural and historical resources.

The character of a cemetery changes with the passage of time. There are active cemeteries that accept interments and there are inactive cemeteries - some still maintained, though closed, and others abandoned. Time also inevitably alters the landscape within and around a cemetery. Weathering, often aided by environmental pollutants, can damage monuments and structures, as can accidents, vandalism, and neglect. Well-intentioned interventions may obliterate the original relationships among carefully laid out parts of the cemetery. Maintenance costs, aging infrastructure, changing surroundings and context, and public liability are pressures facing all cemeteries.

These pressures can lead to a diminution of those elements that give a cemetery its value as a cultural resource, such as its architectural and landscape heritage, as well as its educational, interpretative, and contextual value. It may also result in loss of social and family history, which would be of special value to those connected to the people interred.

The story of Myers Cemetery typifies the plight of our older cemeteries and is representative of a crisis in the preservation of the history of local communities. The story of its inhabitants is our story. And Myers Cemetery desperately needs your help. Read on to find out how you can help save Myers Cemetery.

One of the more colorful members of the extended Myers family buried in the cemetery is John Wesley Thomas (1842-1893), husband of Rachael Myers Thomas (1850-1906). Both are buried in now unmarked graves. Wesley was a deputy sheriff in Whistler and Eight Mile for 20 years in addition to his duties as an engineer for the Mobile and Ohio Railroad. He was gunned down in Whistler in cold blood by two railroad employees on whom he had served an arrest warrant.

The cemetery was deeded in the 1960's to the Whistler Methodist Church by all living descendents of David Louis Myers and any spouses. Some time later, the church deeded the cemetery to the county as part of the newly created Chickasabogue Park in the hope that the county would protect and restore it.

As a result, many headstone bases now lie vacant, their original markers having disappeared. Some older headstones that do still exist are broken - some are no more than shards, while others lie flat and need of professional conservation work.

According to the results of an infrared survey of the cemetery in November, 1999, perhaps as many as 50 graves currently lie unmarked.

Although a county budget exists for the maintenance of Chickasabogue Park in general, no money has ever been allocated specifically for the cemetery. The current budget is not sufficient to fund the expensive replacement of missing headstones and the restoration of existing ones in need of conservation.

And before any restoration efforts can be expended, funding must be raised to survey the cemetery through ground-penetrating radar to locate unmarked graves. This step is required to confirm the results achieved thus far with the newer and therefore less proven technique of real time thermal imaging.

To learn more about how you can help save historic Myers Cemetery from oblivion, or to get an update on the efforts of the Friends of Myers Cemetery, click on one of the links in the left-hand frame.

This website was last updated May 30, 2003.

Top