Just Another Day in the...Cemetary?

Okay, so I don't have a whole lot to do here. I've been working on my family tree again, and I'm severely lacking on information about my paternal grandmother's side of the family.

Yesterday, my dad drove me to Wilkinson County to see his aunt and uncle. He showed me the now kudzu-covered house where he grew up, and the sawmill where his grandfather worked. I saw the abandoned movie theatre that his uncle ran.

Then, we drove another 30 miles away from civilization, past Irwinton (county seat of Wilkinson County and home of Maebob's Diner, a fairly typical small town meat and well, two). We finally turned off the "main highway" (a two lane winding affair) onto Poplar Springs Church Road, going to, you guessed it: Poplar Springs Church (and its cemetary).

My dad's grandpa, James Bartow Tarpley, and his wife, Ella Cook Tarpley were buried there. What I was not prepared to find, nor was my dad even aware of, was that all of his extended family was buried there. At least three quarters of the headstones belonged to VanLandinghams or Tarpleys.

I wanted to read the marker for the little white clapboard church next to the cemetary, and here's what it said: "Poplar Springs Methodist Church - Deeded by Fulton Kemp to the Trustees: Jesse Peacock, Wilty Miller, Peter VanLandingham [my great-great-great-great-great grandfather], and Jethro Dean in 1825 for a Methodist Episcopal Church. Present Church built in 1859 by Edward J[ones] Tarpley [my great-great-great grandfather]."

It will not surprise my friends that I was absolutely elated to discover this! Then, we sort of broke into the church (the door was unlocked, but it had one of those metal latches), and I took a picture. I also decided that I want to get married there, in the middle of nowhere, in a church that was founded and built by my people, my family. It was kind of a revelatory experience, made even more meaningful by the fact that I'm going to be so far away so soon. I felt kind of like in GWTW when Scarlett figures out that everything else is totally meaningless except for land, only in my case, it's not land, it's family.

The pictures are of the church and some of the headstones, including those of the two women who gave me my pseudonym (Ella Serepta), if I should ever become a rockstar/folk singer/romance novelist and choose to change my name.