On December 3, Grade Eight returned to the graveyard, accompanied by LEAP Grade Five. That gave us a force of 25 students. We wanted to take advantage of the unusual December weather in the 70's and record the remaining gravesites before cold weather comes.We divided into six four-person teams, each led by an eighth grader. It was a very productive day. We would have recorded all of the graves, except for the fact that we found many more and brought the count up to 42 gravesites. Many were hidden by dirt, silt, and brush. The most exciting thing to happen was finding a marker knocked over and under some brush. It is the oldest marker we have found. 1850!
The cemetery is in very bad shape. It is at the mouth of McCortney Hollow, which was settled in the 1830's, on the floodplain of the Big Piney River and surrounded by a pasture. Grave stones are knocked down and we think some are buried under the silt from the flooding river.