Note from Brian McLaughlin: In May, I decided that on my way up to visit my grandparents in Charlotte, North Carolina, I would try to find the infamous Paul's Graveyard in Chester County, South Carolina. I had heard stories about the place --- sources such as the Nellis Parkinson manuscript and emails from fellow researchers. I had heard that my ancestors, Thomas Morton, Hugh Parkinson and James Blair, were all buried in this cemetery, so I decided to visit it --- at least I thought it would be that easy. I contacted expert researchers Charlene Deutsch, Nancy Sicotte and Don Dickason (all Marion County researchers) to ask if they knew where it was. They all had ideas of where it was, especially Nancy --- who said the area was dangerous because of hunting season. Well, I did some digging, contacted some people and used some Latitude/Longitude coordinates to find this ancient place. It worked, and my story is below.
June 21, 1999
From Brian McLaughlin
PAUL'S GRAVEYARD (Richburg, South Carolina)
Well, we found the place, it just took forever, that's all. I'm sending this to some people who knew of our search for Paul's Graveyard, and to others who are related to these people of 200 years ago.
To give everybody some background on this adventure (if that's what you call it), here we go. In the late 1700s, shortly before the Revolutionary War, a group of ships came over from Northern Ireland, chartered by the Rev. William Martin of the Scotch Covenanter Presbyterian Church, also know as the Dissenters or Catholic Presbyterians or even Reformed Presbyterians. This particular group settled mostly in Chester County, South Carolina...about 40 minutes south of Charlotte, North Carolina. My particular forefathers in this group consisted of the Mortons, Pauls, Parkinsons, Blairs and Clarks. They all settled in the area around Fishing Creek and Rocky Creek on what is now the eastern side of 1-77 near a small town named Richburg. These families came between 1770 and 1780, farming their respective plots. All these families hated the British and supported the American cause in the Revolution. These Scots-Irish groups founded the Rocky Creek Congregation near present-day Richburg. Other families such as the Stormonts, Kells, Cunninghams, Wylies and Gastons (to name a few) lived in this surrounding area. Most of these families stayed in the Chester County area from about 1770 until 1810/20. They began to feel pinched by the new settlers and objected to the evils of southern slavery. Therefore, they left Chester County as a group and went to places such as Lincoln County, Tennessee and Gibson County, Indiana. Eventually, many of these Dissenters ended up in Randolph County, Illinois and Marion County, Illinois.
Some of these families buried their dead (in Chester County) in what they referred to as Paul's Graveyard. Paul's Graveyard is known by other names, such as Anderson Cemetery and Lynn's Cemetery. When you see how many Lynns are buried in this ancient cemetery, you'll know why some people called it by the name Lynn's Cemetery. The name Anderson Cemetery is the one that the GPS (Global Positioning System) uses --- but don't be fooled by the other Anderson Cemetery in the county. It seems the GPS names were a bit off. Anyways, I'll enclose those Latitude/Longitude coordinates again at the bottom of this letter with some directions.
On Saturday, June 19th, I drove up from my home in Gainesville, Florida to visit my grandparents in Charlotte, North Carolina. I had asked my grandparents if they would like to visit Paul's Graveyard, since these Dissenters formed a huge percentage of my grandfather's background. They said yes. On my way up to Charlotte, I decided it might be a good idea if I actually found this supposedly overgrown area before I led my grandparents on a wild goose chase 40 minutes south of Charlotte. So, while driving through the area on Interstate 77, I got off at the S.C. Highway 97 interchange south of Richburg, which very shortly intersects with S.C. Highway 901, which is the road the cemetery was located off of.
I headed north on 901, passing several locations that I had seen denoted by other Paul's Graveyard researchers. I finally reached the area that I knew it was in, using those landmarks, but couldn't figure out where the heck it was. I must have turned around and driven that mile and a half about 10 times before I finally just figured I would pull up and ask one of the neighbors if they knew anything about it. So, I pulled up in house driveway that doubled as the business access to Blaine's Auto Repair, and knocked on the front door. Finally, a man came from around the corner of his house from his backyard pool, wondering who the heck I was. I asked him if he knew where an old cemetery was, within about a mile from his home. He did. He said he had grown up in the area and had played around the cemetery as a child. He drew a rough map in the gravel for me, and I was off again.
He told me to just go down about another couple hundred yards on my right. There would be a relatively new group of mobile homes in the area. He said to take the dirt road between the two mobile homes on S.C. 901. He said if I saw two blue buildings on the right, I would have gone too far on S.C. 901. Well, I had always heard this road was unnamed, but since the last time a researcher had been there, there have been many mobile homes put on the property and the land has been cleared out. The new name of this road is Appaloosa Ridge Road. So I drove down this road, wondering if this was the correct road or if the nice man was even thinking of the same cemetery I was. I drove up and down Appaloosa Ridge Road for about 30 minutes, looking on the south side of the road to see if I could see anything that would tip it off, and once again I was about to give up. Before I did though, I pulled into a driveway where a man was burning foliage in the front of his mobile home, and asked him if he had ever heard of a cemetery in the area behind his home.
His name is James Moore (3839 Appaloosa Ridge Rd.). He has a black mailbox out in front of his mobile home (on the left side of Appaloosa Ridge Rd.) with "M.J. and D.J. Moore" written on it. He said he doesn't mind a few visitors. He told me that one day he had been back in the woods and discovered the 200-year old cemetery. He said he had always been interested in history and was fascinated with it, sometimes even taking a weed-eater back there to work on the area around Pauls Graveyard to keep it nice.
He agreed to take me back there, putting his front-yard fire out and we trudged through a virtual solid thicket of undergrowth. Lots of briars. The statements I've heard about wearing long pants is true. My legs are all torn up now, even after walking carefully. He took me back to this area of land with basically a dug-out trench around it. The cemetery area, with the circular trench around it, had mostly hardwood trees growing over it, creating a dark canopy over the cemetery. The hardwood canopy was a huge contrast to the scrubby pine and undergrowth around the cemetery. It even looked sort of dark and spooky, like a cemetery should!!!
James showed me a Civil War monument that looked like the youngest stone in the entire cemetery. The cemetery seemed much larger than I had ever heard it was. I kept thinking that it would be a couple 100 feet by a couple 100 feet, but it was a much larger area than that. In the middle of the cemetery we found a ton of perfectly lined up Lynn graves, with dates that were just a little bit younger than our own family's. Off to the side were some Rock family graves. Way off to the right, separated from these Lynn's and Rock's and the other families, were a few graves of our family. I've always heard that our family had a bunch of people buried in this cemetery, but it sure didn't seem like it. I never found a Parkinson or Blair stone, but I found Thomas Morton, John Kell, Jane (Morton) Kell and a Margaret Morten all buried close to each other. Most the stones were either leaning heavily or propped up against a tree. There were three medium sized oaks growing among the graves, just like I had always heard were growing between the Thomas Morton and John Kell graves. I guess that was somewhat symbolic of the way these two men's families got along, maybe? Also, there were depressions in the ground everywhere. Beware, so you don't trip around the cemetery like I did the first time I went there. With the leaves on the ground, you don't know you are stepping into one until you are halfway into it. As for the graves of people we couldn't find, maybe they were buried in there, who knows? Maybe their marker was made of wood and rotted away. My grandfather said later that he thought the whole area was probably in a field at one time, because none of the hardwoods seemed 200 years old or anything. Who knows? Thomas Morton's stone was not very exotic. It had been plucked from a riverbed or something, and it appeared that someone did most of the work on it with a nail and a hammer. I couldn't even do a rubbing of Thomas' stone, because it was grooved deeply enough. As for John and Jane Kell's monuments, they were very well done. They were good stones, obviously purchased instead of "found". Beside them was Margaret Morten, yes, it was spelled with an "e" instead of an "o"?for some reason. Then there was the Elizabeth Mays stone, which was of better quality than Thomas Morton's, but not as good as John and Jane and Margaret's well-etched stones. There were footstones for all but Thomas Morton's grave.
One thing that ticked me off were the hunting blinds set up all over the cemetery. James Moore said he couldn't believe hunters would hunt there. He said, "You wouldn't hunt in a cemetery that had people buried in the 1920s, so why would this be any different?" Of course, with all the new homes and the tons of kids running around the area, nobody has to worry about being shot at in the winter hunting season anymore. Hunting has been abandoned in the area and will never resume. Ironically, when I walked out of the cemetery/hardwood area and back into the brush, I heard a horse-like russling in some very high blackberry brambles. Sure enough, a deer bounded out of the brush and scared me as much as I scared it. James said that there has been discussion about having a right-of-way road constructed, to take visitors back to the cemetery --- now that the land is privately-owned around the cemetery. There has even been land marked off for it, but James Moore said he hasn't heard another thing about it. For now, if you want to go, James said he wouldn't have a problem with having people visit it from his yard, as long as they knock and introduce themselves of course.
On Fathers Day (June 20) I showed my grandparents, Frederick and Rosemary McLaughlin, the Paul's Graveyard. We had conducted a cyber-reunion earlier in the day with one of Grandpop's relatives on another family branch, and they were just as excited as I was to see this place. James Moore was out in his yard again working on burning the foliage in front, and said to head on back to the cemetery.
Directions are, I-77 either south from Charlotte or north from Columbia to Highway 56 interchange. You'll be on Hwy. 56 for less than a mile before you run into S.C. Highway 901. Appaloosa Ridge Road is the third? road on the right side. You will pass Hwy 497 first on the right and Hwy 52 as the second road. You will pass Hunter's Road on your left-hand side and then you need to keep your eyes peeled. You will pass Danny Horne's shop on your right, and then Blaine's, and Appaloosa Ridge Road will be on your right within a few hundred feet. If you see those two blue business buildings on your right, you've definitely gone too far. Just turn down Appaloosa Ridge (currently a dirt/gravel road) and James Moore's home is on the left-hand side and the cemetery is behind his home in that hardwood canopy. There may be a right-of-way for the cemetery on the left side the next time someone heads that way. GPS coordinates are 34'39"42N, 80'00"37W (recorded by GPS and GNIS as "Anderson Cemetery"..