Mulberry Grove

Last week, April and I mapped the Mulberry Grove cemetery just down Chapel Point Rd from Port Tobacco. As you know, Mulberry Grove was the home to our first President John Hanson and some of his family is buried in that cemetery. There are two things I want to point out in terms of the work being done at Mulberry Grove.




First, we are going to take a look at the names of the people buried there and compare it to the census work that Carol has been doing. While these people were buried outside of Port Tobacco proper, were any of these people on the census records of Port Tobacco and thus living in the town itself? Do we need to expand our census probe to include the areas outside of the town? What role did these people play in the development and decline of Port Tobacco? Just a few of the questions we have in mind.


Second thing is the importance of good field work. And this is where I tell all of you that I messed up! That's right, even I make mistakes! While mapping the cemetery (which you can see below), there are things missing. There are duplicate names in the cemetery, which by itself is not surprising. What I didn't do was to write down more than the names of the persons buried to remember which tombstone belonged to whom! There are also a few missing coordinates for some of the tombstones. We have a list of all the people buried there and what the inscriptions say which is very helpful. What needs to be done now is to go back to the cemetery and match up the drawing below with the list we have and the actual tombstones to accurately describe them on our map.

- Peter

PS. We are also having some trouble posting a clear image of the cemetery. We are trying to rectify the problem Thanks for your patience.--Jim