I had a Big Breakfast on my lap as we neared Jasper Lee’s grave. The hunt makes me ravenous. For food, certainly, and for adventure? Definitely. A short message, quickly viewed on an Internet message board, had led us here and we were zeroing in on our target. It’s important to remember that the note had been in my pocket all along. The note I had forgotten about when I was halfway up a mountain the day before. Surrounded by unfamiliar forest, my cell phone dying, and a steep cliff to my immediate left, I suddenly thought “welcome to West Virginia.”
As mentioned in a previous post, I often do research on my genealogy and when I started working on the family tree for my real bloodline there were more than a few delays. For one thing, my information was limited. There were several names but everything had to be fleshed out. But just enough tidbits existed to build on. The trunk of the tree. Not everything blooms in the same season. Other trees were filled in and researched but in the back of my mind, it always lingered that my blood was out there and perhaps documented. I knew the names of my birth parents and paternal grandfather already. The puzzle came together slowly. Eventually the branches of the tree reached my great-great grandfather (and even further), a coal miner named Jasper who lived in West Virginia since his birth in October 1879. He died of stomach cancer on March 8, 1927 at the Salvation Army Hospital in Charleston. He was 47 years old.
Someone had been there before and it wasn’t me. I thought about it when I saw the picture online for the first time. There was a grave with my ancestors name on it. When you are just learning your true family history, the prospect of seeing it in person becomes very exciting. When the opportunity came to visit West Virginia, I jumped at the chance. Jasper and I would meet face to face, in a way at least. The death certificate lists the burial place as a “Georges Creek Cemetery.” It turned out that this was in an unincorporated village named Malden, not 10 minutes from the center of Charleston. I spied an interesting message on a message board, indicating a Hawes Drive. I wrote it down and brought the note with me on the trip. Of course, months had passed and I’d just barely remembered to bring the note at all. Soon it would sit in my pocket, forgotten.
A good time to remember it would’ve been before we reached the wrong road, looking for an area called Powell Hollow. This was supposed to be near Georges Creek, where the cemetery would have taken its name, and the thinking was that if we found the right area we could find the graveyard. Few things are ever as easy as they appear. In unfamiliar territory, with trees all around, everything looked the same. Knowing the name of a place didn’t mean there would be a sign pointing right to it (would’ve been nice though). The road we found ourselves on couldn’t be traversed by car. Rocks jutted out everywhere that would cut up the tires and there were mud pockets to get everything dirty. We walked for a time and found nothing but I was determined, obsessed really. D eventually decided to go back to the car, as he couldn’t see it from our location and knew nothing of the area, while I decided to climb a mountain.
I had gotten the idea into my head that people were buried on mountains in West Virginia (and there is some truth to that), but there was no way to tell where an unknown path would lead. D and I would communicate via Cell Phone. I had been using mine all day and should’ve realized that it wouldn’t last me too long. The path wound up the hill as I spied D in the distance with the car, getting further and further away as I climbed. The trail was steep and eventually, sharply narrowed. Steps had to be careful and deliberate. On the left was a large cliff. About halfway up I realized something. I had no real idea what I was doing. Time to go down. There was mud on my shoes and the sun was setting. Something told me this was hardly the place one would want to get lost after dark. Back at the motel, I was changing for bed and I felt the note in my pocket. We’ve all had those moments where we realize we made a big mess of something that didn’t need one and this was absolutely one of those. All you can really do is laugh at the reality of it. At least I wouldn’t have to climb a huge mountain again.
Georges Creek Cemetery is located down Hawes Drive in Malden, West Virginia. The dirt road opens up to a small residential area and then ends abruptly. When you enter, the cemetery will be on your right, just up a steep hill surrounded by tall grass and trees. Jasper’s grave is next to a wrought iron fence. A simple flat stone in the ground bearing his name, and that of his widow. There was a slight breeze and a dog barked as I stared straight at the contours of the name on the grave. This would be a peaceful place to die. A beautiful land to be buried in.
Georges Creek Cemetery – my ancestors grave is close to this fence, but not visible in the picture.
About 45 minutes away from Malden, is the unincorporated community of Alkol. A coal mining town where my great grandfather Elihu is buried. One might imagine a time when there was a great bustling of activity when the coal miners and their families populated the landscape and lived their lives surrounded by the vast wilderness. Maybe they would hunt for food, or go fishing at a nearby stream. When the coal mining jobs dried up in the area, many families moved on to other pastures, if not greener ones. Now i’m not sure there are any more than 10 people living in the area. Alkol contains one post office, but no restaurants, hospitals, police or fire departments, or even a grocery store. There are no buildings larger than a 2 story house and they aren’t all that close together. The streets are unpaved in places and random paths seem to lead directly into the forest. The silence is deafening. I didn’t grow up in a major city, but a place like this was foreign to me. Everything is such a bright shining green. If you want to escape from civilization, you will find few better places to do so.
There was a man staring at us as we drove past. It’s not strange when you consider he probably doesn’t see too many people he doesn’t recognize. Why would he? When there’s nothing in your town, few people will visit it. But it makes for great exploring. There’s a sense of undiscovered country there. We stopped to ask directions at a house with a large satellite dish attached to the roof. The man who answered the door was friendly and was more than happy to tell us his grandparents were buried on the hill in view of his home. He thought the one we were looking for was nearby but couldn’t give an exact location. There are many cemeteries in the wilderness you see. People tended to be buried close to where they lived with their families laying next to them. Where else would you want to be buried if you lived out there?
I got nervous when I noticed there was no cell phone service. Hardly a surprise, and yet if something were to happen what would you do? Ask a neighbor for help? You wouldn’t want to knock on the door of a house made out of aluminum siding. Junk lying in the yard, strewn all over the place without rhyme or reason. There were a number of such dwellings nearby. Its a different kind of life. Nature takes over when man leaves the land to its own devices. The Wild encroaches on your territory. We passed a church with a hand written sign denoting its name. It was smaller than my living room and had an outhouse with the word “men” clearly visible on the door (I can’t imagine they wouldn’t let women use it as well, as I only saw the one outhouse). A little further down the dirt path you could see an abandoned house with vines crawling up the sides. Nobody had been there in some time. There was a clear path up a steep hill, again covered with rocks, and we decided to climb.
A cemetery lay at the end of the path, and there was no sign to even indicate it was there. If you weren’t actively looking for it you might never even find the place and yet it was clearly maintained. Some broken graves had been repaired but there was a number of good quality stones and several were quite recent burials. The sunlight streamed in between the trees and I started to imagine what life would be like in a place like this, even as I stood among the dead. I heard the birds chirping and breathed in the air. It was a sweet serenity. A vivid dream of a colorful world at the edge of civilization. Where nature takes its course and people rise and fall with the sun. Elihu wasn’t buried on that hill, and maybe not even the next one over. But it was easier to imagine him at peace, having visited such a peaceful place, and perhaps that will have to be enough. Of course, if I ever go back, you know the hunt will simply begin again… – J
A lasting peaceful slumber on a hill in West Virginia
Splintered Kernels 
Lovely story! I too have relatives buried in Georges Creek Cemetery. I was in Charleston thrice as a child for funerals at Fisher Hill Cemetery, and we visited some cousins who still lived up Georges Creek. But, I don’t think we ever visited the cemetery there, though several grandparents from the 1800s are buried there in Hawes Hollow, most notably several Haweses. So glad that your story is on here for inspiration and some geographical guidance! Thank you for sharing.