Ancestors

 Our last stop on our trip to the mountains was to take Doug and Kelly and Jill to the Davis Chapel Cemetery.

Davis Chapel Methodist Church was built by my great grandfather, Francis McGhee Davis, and his sons about 1865 on land he donated.  It replaced the earlier brush arbor preaching place used by the traveling Methodist circuit riders.

Though the church itself is no longer functional, in his wisdom, Francis Davis did not give the cemetery land to the church in1865, but instead gave it to the community where it has to this day its own independent set of trustees.  It is still functional as a cemetery.

Our first relative to be buried there was my great great grandfather, Philip Davis, who died in 1875.  In the following decade my grandfather’s first wife, Nannie, and three of their five children came to final rest there.

As time past it became the final resting place for that grandfather, Joseph Davis, my grandmother, Ellie, several of my grandfather’s brothers and their families, and my Aunt Ruth.  She died  in 1932 of a brain tumor while a 21 year old student at Berea College. Francis Davis, who gave the land was himself buried there in 1903.

Trish and I are making plans to clean the stones as lichen growth has obscured the clear reading of engraving on them,  it was a time of our sons meeting with a piece of their past.