My earliest recollections of the cemetery at Grice, aside from the profound awe in which such places once were held by children, are of the old woven-wire fence, the big digging tools, and the grave of Jacob SCHRUM. Most of the gravestones stand erect, but Jacob SCHRUM'S is a great slab of stone, now lying flush with the ground. In those days the slab was elevated on concrete sides so as to form a big stone box. I wouldn't go within fifty yards of it.

Years passed. I lost somewhere my dread of the patriarch's monument. More years passed and I learned all about the big tools. We used to dig graves here three-feet-and-a-vault. Men and boys from all over would gather to dig, to advise, to socialize. That spot of ground, beyond any doubt, is the hardest two acres of red clay on the entire earth. Swing that heaviest old mattock a long swing (listen to your teeth, how they rattle). Watch it bounce off that flintlike firmament. See if you made so much as a dent.

The clay goes all the way to the top (possibly a little further). A dynasty of busy caretakers, dating back further than does my memory, has plied the ground with industrious hoes, until now all the light dirt has ridden the rains away to extinction. Still the clay is there.

Several years ago we had to take in more ground. So we replaced the old woven wire with chain-link fence, and had a nice, big wrought-iron sign put up over the gate proclaiming, "Grice Cemetery". That is what I came to talk about.

We're used to calling it Grice Cemetery now, and I imagine nothing else would sound quite right to us. But it has not always been so. The records say it once was Hamil's Chapel Graveyard. And if we're to pay attention to the legend, it may have, in the old days, been Poverty Flat Burying Ground. Or, if you like, Horse Thief Memorial Park (for reasons we presently shall see).

Now we've always been a progressive-minded people here. We have stayed just the same all along, but we've changed our name from time to time. As near as I can figure it, that fits the modern-day description of progress.

John J. GRICE, an early-day merchant and our first postmaster (1890), gave us his name. He also gave us a part of the record that is written in stone, for one of the stones there reads, "L.I., wife of J.J. GRICE, died May 23, 1890."

Hamil's Chapel was a Methodist church, but by an amicable arrangement, the Primitive Baptists also met there. Both congregations laid their dead here. Around Rhonesboro they have deep sand. Since this makes for even more difficult burial conditions than our hard clay, most people from over there have put their dead away here with ours from earliest times. From the latter '60s until about the turn of the century, our cemetery went by the name of Hamil's Chapel.

I have seen no recorded evidence that our cemetery ever went by the name of Poverty Flat. The locality bore that name, though, if we may believe a legend that lives and persists. Certainly the name is aptly chosen. And there is a flat, of sorts. It lies along the Simpsonville Road from about the old P.K. WILLIAMS homestead place (the Fred BELL place), on down past 'New Grice' at
the crossroads, about to the Joe DAVIS place. The old folks may have seen indications of poverty thereabouts. None of them are left to remember.

The beginnings of this old graveyard are shrouded in obscurity. Uncle Tobe DAVIS was donor of the original and much smaller plot. But we were in business here even before Uncle Tobe's time. The deed records place him in ownership of surrounding lands circa 1895, and that aforementioned Jacob SCHRUM of the Fearsome Box took his departure on March 14, 1871. No earlier inscribed dates may be found (a new marker is inscribed, "WILLIAMS Infant 1864"), yet rough native stone marks many a weathered mound that very well may have been made before was made the final resting place of that staunch old soldier and builder. Further, we have the spoken recollection of one other fondly remembered patriarch, born in the mid-fifties, of having passed the cemetery, as a child, on his way to the mill. That mill might well have been one or the other of the HORNE mills, the earliest of which ran as early as August, 1860.

The story of the Grice Cemetery would be poorly told without recounting the Horse Thief Legend. Like any proper sort of legend, this one cannot be substantiated. But it would be unthinkable to allow it to fade away after being handed down, with embellishments, from one generation to the next over this good span of years.

The most often-told of the several versions goes like this:Long ago, before the invention and promulgation of police brutality, a horse thief was apprehended, hanged, and buried on a neighboring piece of land. Now the owner of that land pretty soon encountered a man who might have bought it, except for its offensive subterranian occupant. Whereupon (or so goes the
legend) the owner, who was needing the money, promptly exhumed the malefactor's remains and reburied him where this cemetery was to grow up around his grave.

I don't know if the man sold his land or not, after going to so much trouble to purify it, but I can show you the grave. If you don't wish to go away believing the legend I don't advise you to touch it, even be it empty, as one version contends.

You could modify this bizarre tale a little and make a believeable one, if you were to read Oba ROBERTS' deed to David LEE of November 30, 1852. Oba ROBERTS was or had been the sheriff of an infant Upshur County at that time. I imagine horse thieves were not rare hereabouts. Immigrant trains were frequent and susceptible fare for a man skillful in that trade.

Wood County, not then organized nor "lawed up", was a conveniently accessible haven for a man with fast-moving merchandise to put under wraps.

Mr. ROBERTS had a duty as the sheriff to discourage such practice of horse-thievery. I expect summary justice like the legend speaks of was considered a part of his duty, criminal code notwithstanding. Some are bound to look upon this practice as a crude handling of due process, and to point with some horror to the defendant's undeniable lack of legal counsel. Our only rebuttal could be that the prosecution had no legal representation, either.

One version of the legend shoots the horse thief, rather than hanging him. On the premise that hangropes snap less often than do guns, a man truly would have found scant incentive to halt, upon order, so close to Wood County and immunity. If they had to shoot a man here, they missed the use of the great old, heavy-limbed oaks, perfect hanging trees, growing here to this day.

When Sheriff ROBERTS sold the ancient Wm H. BEAVERS headright to Mr. LEE, he retained a quarter-section (160 acres) for himself. The transaction is duly recorded on page 290 of Volume D, Upshur County Deed Records. Mr. ROBERTS specifically rejects the northeast quarter-section. Grice Cemetery lies in that 160 acres. All other considerations being equal, there had to be some reason Oba ROBERTS DIDN'T WANT THAT PIECE OF GROUND.

Some say that Aunt Betty SMITH was the first person buried here. Others claim that a man shotgunned by John CALHOUN was first. Ask a dozen people. Get a dozen answers. Someone was first. Nobody knows for sure but that it was that much-discussed, nameless horse thief who, upon some bitter hour of some early day and year, became founder of our burying ground. The MOON family buried a young son in 1884, not here but on a little knoll near their home, on the old MOON place just west of Mrs. Bernice (CROSS) POOLE'S home place. They harbored no malice toward cemeteries. They just wanted to keep him near. But they all are gone to their own far distant graves these many, many years and that deserted hill is such a lonesome place that I don't like to go there anymore.

Should anyone see a need to add to, or take from, or otherwise to alter this poor tale, or have any altogether different story to tell, will he kindly tell it to me? (Milton Dacus)

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