Private Family Cemeteries

The following quotation is taken from a book entitled “Weird Kentucky:  Your Travel Guide to Kentucky’s Local Legends and Best Kept…”  From page 209 in a section captioned “Cemetery Safari,”  “Being so finely chopped up into small counties (one hundred and twenty:  third most counties of any state in the union), Kentucky naturally contains a higher number of official county cemeteries than many other states.  And because of our dense mountainous and rural areas there’s also a very high quotient of private family cemeteries, often on private property and just as often lost, forgotten, or bulldozed over.”

I have noticed numerous small cemeteries in the area.  Some are quite small with only a few gravestones.  Some sit near a road but with pasture or farm land all around.  Some are not even near a public road but near where a house once stood.  As I’ve posted here earlier I am in the process of tearing down an old house for the building materials.  I had made several trips up to this old house, which is located about 1/4 mile from the public road down a farm lane, before I noticed an overgrown family cemetery.  The only family name I located was “Wilcoxson.”  Most of the deaths were from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.  The most recent burial I noted was in 1947.  Here are a few photos.

  


 

Although not as commonly done as in days gone by some burials are still made in private family cemeteries.  A friend of ours died a year ago last summer and she was buried on the family farm.  According to what I have been able to find,  if one’s land is outside the village or city limits and if there is no local mention of family cemeteries in any zoning there one may go right ahead and bury their family member on their own property.  This is something we have discussed with Darryl and it is our hopes that when that time comes we will be laid to rest right here on Cedar Ridge Farm.