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by Tom Kelly
Editor and Publisher of Piney Woods Journal
The mottled, faded letters on the weathered old tombstone reads ``Born May 16, 1832. Died Feb. 22, 1914.'' Plus some other writing at the bottom that I resolved to return later to decipher, shivering in the dull light obscured by icy winter clouds which grayed out an ugly late-December afternoon sky southwest of Sikes, Louisiana, on a rutted, muddy dirt road off Jake Creel Road, not far past the Hurricane Grove Church Road.
1832. Andrew Jackson, the seventh President of the United States, was elected to a second term, having defeated Henry Clay one hundred years prior to Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term. Jackson, ``Old Hickory'', was first elected in 1828, defeating John Quincy Adams, the son of the second American president, John Adams. Population of the United States was 12,866,000, equal to 7.3 residents per square mile in a land area of 1.75 million square miles. Louisiana and Missouri were the far-western states of the then-27 states of the Union; Texas would not be admitted for another 13 years, in 1845, Arkansas in 1836. Abraham Lincoln was a 23-year old lawyer, who two years later would become a member of the Illinois legislature, and 29 years after that, in 1861, the 16th American President.
1832. Louis Phillipe was king of France; William IV was king of England. Ferdinand VII was king of Spain. Nicholas I was czar of Russia. The first laboratory-model electric generator was invented by Michael Faraday in England. Cyrus McCormick's reaper and Samuel Colt's revolver would come a bit later, in 1834, and 1835 respectively.
This December 2000 was my second visit to this old cemetery, which appears to be under no particular care, its rusted metal gate swinging ajar, a large oak inside the fence overhanging several gravestones, several of which appear to be comparatively modern. The old-time ``graveyard working'' of an earlier period in this part of the country seems to have been neglected here. The only signs of human habitation are a few scattered spent shotgun shells on the ground, suggesting that hunters may find the occasional squirrel scampering through the trees which surround the cemetery.
My first visit was on August 12, 1972 - my father's 70th birthday, which at the time seemed remarkable but as I approach my own similar anniversary within six or eight more weeks, it seems not that big a deal. He was at the time already in the grip of the leukemia which would take his life in just a bit more than two years, and had invited me on a tour of the places of his, and my, life in Winn Parish, Louisiana. We tramped around the boundaries of the ``Old Home Place'' in the Gaar's Mill community - he narrating the locations of old roads, trails, and landmarks, crops he had planted, and past events that came to his mind, I trailing behind trying to catch his words on a tape recorder I had stuffed in my pocket, and grabbing an occasional snapshot. We pushed through an overgrown trail across from the abandoned Gaar's Mill school where he once attended, and later taught, through woods to the now forested former farmstead where he was born, just a short walk beyond which lies the Harmony Grove Baptist Church and cemetery, land for which was given by his father, my grandfather, James Thomas Kelly, whose funeral I remember attending at age two-and-a-half. The remains of the house lay collapsed on the ground with saplings and other vegetation pushing through the cracks. A gnarled pear tree which he claimed to remember from his childhood thrived beside the old lumber, and had a few very luscious fruits which I picked and ate. We went to the site where he said I was born, at what he called Old Joyce, where he taught school near the old Tremont mill. Only plantation pine trees lined the landscape at that place.
Then he said, ``Now let's go see Grandpap's grave.'
His grandfather, whom I never met, nor scarcely heard any discussion of, except that he came with a wagon train of settlers from Georgia when ``Papa Kelly,'' his son, my grandfather, was a baby, somewhere around 1857. ``Grandpap'' would have been around 25, maybe 26.
My father Troy and I set off. Although he had not lived in Louisiana in 23 years, he went straight to the Kelly cemetery, somewhere between the Hudson Camp Ground and Sikes, by way of a circuit of winding unpaved back roads which left my mental compass spinning hopelessly. We got out of the car and walked into the shaded enclosure. He walked directly to the same tombstone, and pointed. "That's him," he said. "My Grandpap." I read the inscription: "W.M. Kelley, Born May 16, 1832, Died Feb. 22, 1914." Troy at age 12 would remember the man, born when Andy Jackson was President, in his prime during the era of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, dead three months shy of 82, two years before World War I.
Did I say Kelley? I shook my head in disbelief: From an early age, ever since I became aware that some people spelled their last name differently from ours, I had stood up for the correct spelling of Kelly. And then I shrugged. Maybe the person who made the tombstone wasn't first in his class in spelling. Maybe Grandpap spelled his name with the extra letter after all. Maybe the family just ran out of e's after leaving Georgia; Lord knows we didn't have much else, either. Who knows why the difference? I did notice several more-recent gravestones with the "correct" spelling, laid out in the same general area as Grandpap's.
To the people in and around Winnfield who frequently ask me, Are you kin to Howard Kelley and Max Kelley? I have always said No, we spell our names differently. But upon reflection, after revisiting Grandpap's grave for the first time since 1972, it occurs to me that the correct answer could just be, Maybe; we're not real sure.
I had tried and failed on my own several times through the years to go back to that cemetery. Just couldn't find it. While visiting District Attorney Terry Reeves' annual Christmas open house last month, I noticed on the wall a Winn Parish map showing parish roads and local landmarks. Out of curiosity, I looked, and lo, there was the Kelly (Kelley) cemetery, plainly marked. I made a quick note of the route, and later drove directly to it. Now that I know where it is, when my retired younger brother Jerry visits here for New Years, I'll find a moment to say to him, "Now let's go see Grandpap's grave." He's never been there.
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