More cemeteries. A drive out to Floyd County to drop off a flash drive to the Historical Society is incomplete without taking a detour to knock on stranger’s doors. As a northerner, I was taken aback when Tom first told us we’d be arriving unannounced to random people’s farms asking to see the cemeteries on their properties. Sometimes we’re met with people entirely weirded out by our request, while other times it leads to a jackpot of insight into Virginia’s history.
Pictured is a field of the Blackwell family farm. Below the lone tree on the hill is a cemetery of fewer than a dozen identifiable burials. This unannounced visit introduced us to an elderly woman and her husband, the former of which turned out to be a dedicated genealogist with a detailed record of the Blackwell family and their relatives. She didn’t invite us in, but I did manage to get a glimpse of her home office where she conducted and stored her family tree research by asking to use their bathroom. Again, the northerner in me felt like I was intruding but it turned out to be an effective way of getting a deeper insight into the woman’s hobby. Mrs. Blackwell gladly let us go examine the cemetery and, thankfully, no cows swarmed us this time. We identified more burials than were marked and were left with more questions than we had upon arrival. One unmarked grave, for example, we learned is actually an old family pet’s burial site. Two headstones with porcelain faces were defaced we found out because of past relatives attempts at hiding certain aspects of the family’s history.
Not everyone is as welcoming and enthusiastic about us looking at their sites though. Tom has made the decision to not use a state issued sticker on the truck to inform people a state employee has arrived because of the widespread distrust of the government in southwestern Virginia. In fact, Tom often introduces himself as merely Tom and doesn’t even acknowledge he’s a state archaeologist. The tension creates more challenges for me as an intern, having to explain I’m a college student using their site as a learning opportunity.