Name: Ray Cemetery
State: Tennessee
Ray Cemetery is currently my favorite type of cemetery to discover. I found this cemetery purely by using an old topo map and my trusty Garmin GPS. Ray Cemetery is located on an old piece of farmland. The cemetery is completely neglected and largely forgotten. I knocked on the door of a couple of farm houses before I found a man who remembered the cemetery from when he was a boy. He told me no one had been on that part of the farm in well over 15 years. Though he did not offer to show me around, he welcomed me to walk through his property and pointed the way.
Rarely do I find such overgrown cemeteries. Ray Cemetery is in a low-lying area of 200 year old farmland. This particular area is frequently muddy from rain runoff and heavy vegetation means nature is gradually reclaiming the land.
The cemetery was difficult to find in such heavy undergrowth and I was only able to find the cemetery when my research assistant point out a barely visible cattle trail leading into otherwise impenetrable thickets.
We noticed haphazardly placed field stones that we mistook for simple rocks lying on the ground. Only after noticing an engraved tombstone did we realize that the field stones were marking gravesites. Many plots were caved in and there were still many more (we assume) unmarked grave sites.
Unmarked fieldstone in Ray Cemetery
