Submitted by Jimmy Oliphant


Transcribed from Marshall News Messenger article

Dec 4, 1983
Page 1A

By Ferrell Foster
Managing Editor

About 10 o'clock one morning early last week, Robert Pepper was walking, virtually crawling, through the woods hoping to jump a deer.

But what he found was a narrow rectagular slab about a foot wide and three feet tall - a gravestone.  It marked the burial site of one Mary F Wheeler, born April 22, 1842, doed Dec 23, 1866.

Upon closer observation, Pepper spotted three more of the stones hidden in thick underbrush laced with briars.  Trees well over 50 years old grew from the midst of the graves.  The plot had been left unattended for at least that long.

Little is kinown about the cemetery where Pepper has now found at least eight markers and believes he has pinpointed a number of unmarked graves.  It is located just off Driskel Bridge Road, about 11 miles, as the crow flies, northwest of Marshall.

There is a well-kept cemetery nearby with about 50 graves.  But it is the resting place for people who, for the most part, died in this half of the 20th century.  It is apparently used by the area black community.

Pepper, who is white, talked with older black persons in the area in an effort to discover why the old cemetery had been neglected.  They told him it was a "white" cemetery and did not know who was responsible for its upkeep.

One man told him the grave site was used "way before his time".  And another said he thought some of those buried there were born in the 1700s.

Pepper and his wife, Shirley, began to search for families of those buried in the plot, but met with little success.

Three of the tombstones bear the Craver surname.  Mrs Pepper's grandmother was a Craver, but she knew nothing about the cemetery.

One woman in her 90s told the Peppers that she had been brought to the gravesite by her father when she was a child, but that was all she could recall.

But Pepper is not waiting until he finds relatives to begin cleaning up the area.  His regular job requires only about four hours of his time a day, and he has taken on the cemetery clean-up as a personal project.

He has worked at the plot virtually every day since he discovered it, already putting in about 16 hours of work.

Why?  "It needs it," Pepper said.  "It's a shame it's grown up this bad and it needs to be done."

Pepper has already cut down a number of smaller trees and bushes and cleaned out briars.  As he cleans away more brush and leaves, he expects to locate more headstones.

The ground above many of the graves, including unmarked ones, has sunken.  Pepper intends "to haul in some dirt and fill in the sunken areas."  He also hopes to "put some kind of fence around it."

In addition to the Wheeler grave, Pepper has uncovered tombstones bearing the following:

Charles Craver; born Dec 16, 1816; died Aug 18, 1887
Martha A Craver; born Nov 25, 1818; died Sep 24, 1889
Mary B Craver
Sarah M Richardson; died Jan 5, 1875; aged 29 years 11 mos and 7 days
William A - son of J Q and Anna Durham; born May 16, 1862; died Feb 9, 1867
My little Nancy Lula Dickins
Andrew J Peddy; born Nov 9, 1818; died May 31, 1871; sit tibi terra levis

Inez Hughes, director of Harrison County Historical Museum, had no information on those buried in the cemetery.  She said, however, that she had heard of "an old Craver cemetery, but no one knows where it is."  She said Cravers first came to this area in 1846.

Kyle Craver of Sulphur Springs has extensively researched the Craver history, but he had no direct information on any of those in the gravesite.  However, his uncle, A J "Jack" Peddy died about 20 years ago and is buried in Wood County.  That Peddy could possibly be a grandson of the Andrew J Peddy in the newly discovered plot.