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FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 1984
BOILING SPRINGS, NX
SINGl.i: COPY 15 C l N I S
High Ground Close To Home
There was a time when, even
in death, a family member was
apt to be kept very close to
home. It was a tradition
among early settlers, says
Lloyd Hamrick, of Shelby, an
expert on local cemeteries.
“’Back when they owned a
lot of land, they’d find a kind
of a high knoll and put their
family cemetery on it,” says
Hamrick, who knows where a
lot of the old burying grounds
are, even though few signs are
left to mark some of them.
“There’s an old Graham
graveyard down 226, below
Patterson Springs; there’s one
off 74, before Kings Mountain
- there’s Goforths buried
there, one that died in 1780.
There’s one in the back of
some people’s yard, on Peach
Street, and one behind Ingle’s,
off 74, and one behind the
fairgrounds .
“There’s graveyards every
where,” Hamrick says, but so
wasted and overgrown are a
lot of them that, he adds,
“somebody’s got to be with
you who knows where you’re
going, or you’re wasting your
time.”
As communities grew, home
burials declined. Although,
there is no law, except those in
some municipalities,'that pre
vents being buried on one’s
own land. Jim Neal of Lutz-
Austell Funderal Home recalls
a recent burial in a family plot
of about a dozen graves in
New House. And another in a
less formal locale: “Back a
couple of years ago we buried
an old gentleman down by his
fishpond,” Neal says. “That’s
where he wanted to be.”
There is not even a law that
a body must be embalmed,
unless it is carried across a
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The sun is setting in many church cemeteries on the practice of fencing family plots, like
this one in Popular Springs Churchyard, because of upkeep problems. But some hold firm to
old traditions.
state line, or the person died of mains for the deceased to be a proper death certificate is
certain communicable di- dressed by friends, put in a completed ^urie un er
seases. Thus the possibility re- homemade casket and — once
Turn To Page 2
Hopeful Tilling Lattimote Tuning Up
mm.
Charles Jones is out with the early bird, tilling the
strawberry patch in front of the new home, almost invisible
back up in the woods, that he's building on Camp Creek
Church Road. May neither the early bird - nor the worm - get
to those berries, when they ripen, before the plowman and
his friends.
A parade of proven fa
vorites in the fields of blue-
grass and traditional old-time
music will appear Saturday,
March 31 at Lattimore’s sixth
annual Foothills Folk Festival.
Native John S. Blanton Jr.
will return from Raleigh to act
as master of ceremonies for
the event, which will raise
money for a public tennis
court for the town. The Youth
Development Committee of
Lattimroe Church is sponsor
ing the festival. Proceeds from
earlier shows have gone to
provide recreation facilities,
including a fully-equipped ball
field, for area youth.
Featured on the program
will be Phil and Gaye John
son, a versatile pair well-
known to wide-spread country
music audiences for their
songs and guitar and mandolin
playing; ballad singer Maggie
Lauterer; the Magnum dog
gers, of Maggie Valley; the
Blue Ridge Mountain dog
gers, from Cnadler; the Car
olina Cut-Ups Band, from
Weaverville; the Lincoln
County Pardners bluegrass
band; the Leonard McSwain
Band, of Lattimore and
another local bluegrass band,
“Kentucky Grass.”
Phil and Gaye Johnson, of
Green Creek, were named the
best performing group at the
Me mtain Dance and Folk
Festival in Charlotte and have
reached thousands on radio
and television. Their most re
cent performance abroad took
them to Singapore, with a
repertory of folk, blues, blue-
Turn To Page 2
The Carolina Cut-Ups will play at Lattimore's Festival.