May 02 2008
Past and Present
While in Whitesville a couple of days ago I had the opportunity to visit another old cemetery. This one is located on the side of the mountain between Whitesville and Sylvester.
This site was full of anonymity. Each burial site marked with a stone. Someone had been kind enough to mark a couple of the sites with wooden crosses. The crosses are only a few years old. I believe these particular crosses held a different meaning when they were put here than the meaning a cross is normally meant to portray. They are here to let someone know there is a grave here.
This site sits within yards of an overland coal belt and likewise from a train yard.
An overland belt is used to take coal over and through the mountains (from a mine to a prep plant in this case) by belt when trucking the coal isn’t feasible.
I get into sites like the old graveyard and I really can’t help but think about the history buried there. These are people buried here and they did something in their life. I often wonder what that something was. My friend Mountainsaver was with me and he said there used to be a tombstone here that had the name B.D. White on it. The town of Whitesville was said to be founded by D.B. White. A coincidence maybe? I’m beginning to not believe in coincidences. I did wonder what happened to the tombstone because there was none but rocks there now.
