Memorial Day service coming to a former poor farm's cemetery
princeton – Two of the graves have markers and the others are marked only by indentations in the earth. Many factors brought around 300 people, likely more, to a poor farm's cemetery, but they will be remembered on an appropriate day, and that's the Sunday before Memorial Day.
This year's Poor Farm Cemetery Memorial Service will begin at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 25 at the Gardner Center off Exit 14 of Interstate 77 near Princeton. A golf buggy will be available to help visitors unable to walk from the center's parking lot to the cemetery.
Located a short walk from the Gardner Center, the Mercer County Poor Farm's cemetery had been forgotten for years. Overgrown and abandoned, the many souls interred there had been lost to memory. This started changing around 2019 when the Mercer County Commission acquired the former U.S. Department of Forestry Laboratory in Gardner and converted it into offices and a meeting center.
Mercer County Commission President Bill Archer and Everett Cole, the Gardner Center's maintenance director, spent a couple of days this week clearing away branches brought down by recent storms. They were preparing for Sunday's Memorial Day service at the cemetery.
'We've had pretty large crowds and we've had small crowds,' Archer said. 'We did it in heavy rainfall one time and we still had several people gathered under umbrellas to come see it. Usually when people are aware of it, there's people who come and participate. Of course, we have our handicap conveyance to take them up to the cemetery for people.'
The Mercer County Poor Farm was a place where homeless people who had nowhere else to go could settle and earn a living by farming the land.
'The cemetery was started in 1920,' Archer said. 'It's possible some people from World War I who, because they didn't have anything after they returned from the war, may have been there; but I don't know. That's just speculation on my part.'
There are times when poor farm's records hint at the tragedies which struck families in the coal mining communities.
'We do think about all those people who were there and when you look through the record books – which I keep them at Gardner now –when I look through the record books you can see, like for example, it's always been touching to me that sometimes you can almost trace mine disasters by all of a sudden you have additional population coming out to the poor farm,' Archer said. 'I assume it's because they lost a loved one, lost a spouse. They had no other place to turn. The county was even back then was nice about.'
Archer got out a long list of around 300 poor farm residents who are interred in the cemetery. Their ages range from infant to elderly.
One, Rebecca Kinzer, died on Dec. 15, 1944, of pneumonia when she was 2 months old. Another grave is that of Lutica Daniel, 22, whose cause of death on Oct. 9, 1924, was listed as 'homicide, gunshot wound.' Further down the list is a grave belongs to 99-year-old Margia Marshall Clendenon, who passed away on Jan. 5, 1922, of old age. In many other cases, the cause of death is unknown.
And there are still many graves that have not been identified, Archer said.
'And we know, I can tell you by sections where, for example, where children are buried,' he said. 'Their graves are usually smaller than the other ones. There are only two markers that identify the two people and both of them were United Mine Workers, and so the United Mine Workers gave them (markers).'
Pastor Craig Hammond, who is the Bluefield Union Mission's executive director, will present the service's keynote message.
'It's just a memorial service for all those who lived and died at the farm, many who are not known because their identities have not been discovered, but many are known. Bill did a wonderful job in identifying people there, but there are lots who are still not known to anybody,' Hammond said. 'That is something that is not uncommon even to this day. There are many people that are deceased, but with no one to claim them; so we just try to remember these folks, the lives that they lived. Many of them were at the farm for reasons beyond their control.'
Memorial Day will be a time for recalling people who were once forgotten entirely.
'We look forward to that every year,' Hammond said about Sunday's memorial service. 'It is a time to remember those who were unfortunate. Even if they are unknown to us, we know that they are known to the Creator.'
Contact Greg Jordan at
gjordan@bdtonline.com
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