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Rickman Family Cemetery
Volunteers Work To Restore Cemetery
March 05, 2005
Jennie Jones Giles
Times-News Staff Writer
[email protected]
Briars and weeds are clipped and cut. Saplings and trees are felled. Grass is mowed, while dirt and leaves are raked sometimes revealing grave stones lost to sight for years and brush is hauled away.
Volunteers, numbering from 20 to 75, have been donating four to five hours on Saturdays to clean up the historic cemeteries in Henderson County.
"At each cleanup, the number of volunteers increases and more family descendants are coming," said Norman Miller with the Sons of Confederate Veterans and one of the organizers of the cemetery clean ups.
The cleanups began in an effort to preserve the historic cemeteries in the county. The plight of the old cemeteries in the county became an issue after the public became aware of the destruction of some cemeteries and the endangered condition of others. Five cemeteries have been cleaned and restored in the last four months, sponsored by the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
The Henderson County Board of Commissioners formed a Cemetery Advisory Committee and passed an ordinance reinforcing guidelines for cemetery removal. The cemeteries are also being added to the county's GIS map.
At the next cemetery cleanup Saturday, March 12, at the Rickman Cemetery in Mills River, the Sons of Confederate Veterans are holding an old-fashioned Decoration Day and picnic to encourage more family members and residents to participate.
"The clean ups stir memories of families, of Decoration Day and of families getting together for dinner on the grounds and celebrating memories," Jean Poteat, a volunteer at the clean ups, said.
Labor of love
Some of the cemeteries have not been cleaned in generations. Some, such as Mill Pond in the Rugby community, require hours of backbreaking work cutting eight-foot tall straw grass with swing blades and machetes.
At Davis Cemetery in the Green River community, loads of dirt were hauled by wheelbarrow as stones were reset and sunken graves filled. Other gravestones were dug out from underneath layers of dirt.
The Gang at Davis Cemetery
"Every stone tells a story of love and hardship," Poteat said.
"A person's whole life is contained within the birth and death dates on those stones," said her husband, Curtis Poteat.
Poteat said some volunteers have come from Morganton and other towns to help with the clean ups.
"These cemeteries tell the early history of this county and I want to preserve our history," said volunteer Jessica Miller.
"One person can make a difference in the county," said Joe Young, commander of the local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the group sponsoring the cemetery clean ups.
Residents and family members are asked to bring a covered-dish and beverages to the Rickman cemetery clean up, which will begin at 10 a.m.
"People can tell stories, put flowers on graves and share history," Miller said.
Color guard
Three of the Confederate Veterans Markers at Rickman Cemetery
The Sons of Confederate Veterans will perform a color guard in Civil War uniforms and a gun salute in honor of the six Confederate veterans buried at the cemetery.
The grave of a Revolutionary War soldier, Jesse Rickman, is also located in the cemetery.
Jesse Rickman's father was Dr. William Rickman of Charles City, Va., director of hospitals of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, wrote descendant Marie Towe McClure in the Henderson County Heritage, Volume I. Jesse Rickman served with the American troops in the Wilmington District in 1783-84, McClure wrote. In 1791, he married Mary Trantham.
"In 1836, Jesse gave the land on which the first Mills River Baptist Church was built," McClure wrote. "Mary Trantham Rickman, who died a short time after this deed was issued, was among the first to be buried across from the church, in the family cemetery near their home, known as Sycamore."
Sadie Smathers Patton, a local historian who wrote a history of Henderson County in the late 1940s, was a descendant of the Rickman and Smathers family, who are buried at the cemetery. She kept the cemetery cleaned for many years.
Patton's father, John Smathers, was the owner of the first automobile in Henderson County, said Frank FitzSimons in his book From the Banks of the Oklawaha.
J.P. Rickman, a descendant of the Rickmans buried in the cemetery, opened a store on Main Street in the late 1800s. In 1887-88, he served as mayor of Hendersonville and was president of an early, local bank. In 1895, he built a large, two-story house on the corner of Fourth Avenue West and Washington Street. The house was hand-morticed and pinned together with locust pins, wrote FitzSimons.
"The Rickman house was a mansion for the little village of Hendersonville in 1895," FitzSimons wrote.
The home later became a boarding house, known as the Kentucky Home, and later a hotel. In 1962, the hotel was demolished by the city of Hendersonville to build a municipal parking lot.
In 1905, Rickman sold the Fourth Avenue West property and built a home on Pickens Hill off Sixth Avenue West. The family later moved to Greenville, S.C. The former Rickman home was enlarged and remodeled into the Park Hill Inn, a luxury hotel. It later housed the Hendersonville Elks Club. The building burned in a fire in the 1970s.
For more information on the cleanup, call 698-7392, 890-4015 or 692-2174.
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2005