Tombstone Tuesday - Camden, S.C.

As I finished going through the cemetery files (see previous posts), I did hit paydirt. One of the files contains a spiral-bound notebook where Ted had written down the names in a cemetery (original work), then gone back and annotated where he found full dates or family members' names. Another file had similar work, scribbled onto the backs of re-used paper.

While my goal was to see if we could publish any of Ted's work, I was excited about some of his copied material because it pertains to cemeteries where my Quaker ancestors lived - Bush River and Camden (Fredericksburgh), S.C.

I've never been to Bush River. A descendant in Georgia, with Ted's help, organized a group of people that has done a lot of work to clean up the cemetery. The Haworth family has a couple of photos on their website. I'd like to go there someday, in the next two years.

The Old Quaker Cemetery at Camden, which has grown as it is still in use by the current town, started as a small burying ground used by the Fredericksburgh Monthly Meeting (the old name of Camden, also called Wateree and Pine Tree Hill). Here are some photos I took during a visit in 2007. The brick-covered graves, with no inscription, are purported to be old Quaker graves. Which means that one of them could possibly belong to my ancestor, Joshua English, who immigrated from Ireland in 1753. I don't know. I just know that the 18th-century Quakers didn't believe in marking their names onto headstones.