Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Tombstone Tuesday - Sarah's Chapel


On our recent trip east I was fortunate to finally get to Dade County, Georgia.  Since I first found my Bond family in that county in 1850 I've been curious about the place.  I  had very little information to go on, and not a lot of time.  We landed in Trenton, Georgia and headed up the highway hoping to run across a cemetery.  I quickly checked http://www.findagrave.com/ and noted that John P. Bond was buried at Sarah's Chapel on Sarah's Chapel Road.   As we drove slowly north we fortunately saw the road sign for Sarah's Chapel Road and had no problem locating the cemetery.  

I had several reasons to visit this cemetery in addition to knowing that John P. Bond, a brother of our Gr-Grandfather Charles Bond, was buried here.  His was the only grave listed on findagrave and I wondered why he was seemingly buried there alone when he spent a lot of time visiting Fannin County, Texas where his brother lived.  He also owned a lot of land in Fannin County, and was often selling land there.   He sold two 1/4 interest in a 244 acre piece of property to his two brothers, Charles and William Thomas Bond.  Why would he choose to be buried back in Georgia where there was no one, I wondered.

We found his grave right away.  And next to it, was his wife's headstone, Nannie (Hale) Bond.   There are a lot of Hales buried in this cemetery.  Also there was his son's grave, James D. Bond.   John P. Bond was, as far as I can tell, the oldest half-brother of Charles Bond.  Both were sons of William W. Bond, John by a first wife who is unknown, and Charles by the second wife Janetta Neighbors.  

 On the 1850 census, William W. and wife Janetta (spelled variously as Ganetta, Jennetter, and many other ways) were living in Dade County, with four children from his first wife: John P., Jane, Moses, and Martha.  Children from his marriage to Janetta were: William T., Benjamin, Charles H., George W., and Johnston.  I find it interesting that our grandfather, Benjamin Moses Bond, was named after two of his father's brothers.  I have never been able to find anything on the first family except John P. Bond and his family.  Of the second family, William T. Bond is buried in Hilger Cemetery, as well as his brother Charles and mother Janetta and other Bond and Neighbors/Nabors relatives. 


John B. Bond was a First Lieutenant in the Army for the Confederacy, Company F, 34th Georgia Volunteer Infantry, Army of Tennessee.  He was born 1838 and died 1894.

I was hoping I'd find the family of Charles Bond's mother, Janetta Neighbors, but I found no Neighbors graves.  Benjamin Neighbors, who Charles' brother Benjamin was probably named after, and who I believe to be Janetta's father, lived in Dade County at the same time as the Bonds.  There are a lot of old gravestones, and many of them are broken and in very poor condition.   Some are buried under a lot of brush, and I started wading through to the back of the cemetery, but the heavy undergrowth discouraged me.   Here's a photo of a gravestone that is buried under a tree in a lot of brush.  I couldn't get close enough to read the engraving.   Generally, the cemetery is very well cared for, but it's obvious this area gets a lot of rain and a lot of growth and it would probably be a full-time job keeping these old stones readable.   You can barely see the gravestone in the middle of this photo.

I'll be working to determine if there are other family members buried in Sarah's Chapel Cemetery.

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