The Asbury Rose was blooming, so I figured it was time to cut the cemetery.

I don’t know the proper name for the pink rose, but I discovered it in the spring of 1993 during cleanup and restoration of the abandoned burial ground way out Halls Ferry Road, so I dubbed it the Asbury Rose.

A visit to Asbury in the winter of ’93 is what prompted the cleanup. I was writing a story for the Post about the murder of Minerva Cook. She’s buried at Asbury along with parents and children and cousins. In her diary, she had told about the tombstone of her little boy, Charles Francis, who died in 1855 when not quite 2 years old.

After church one Sunday, I went to the cemetery armed with kaiser blades and an ax and a camera. The late Hobbs Freeman was with me, and after I had cut my way through the jungle of vines and briars and downed trees, and had found the tombstone, I told Hobbs that before we left I needed to pay my respects to Estelle Cotton Henderson, a great aunt who was the last person buried there. That was in 1943, when I was 7 years old — and I faintly recalled going to the funeral. Fifty years later, I was searching for her tombstone.

It was Hobbs who said, “We ought to clean this place up,” and my reply was, “You must have lost your mind. There’s no way we can do that.”

We started a week later and were joined by a dozen or so friends, neighbors and relatives. It was a chain saw and tractor-with-bush hog-job, but after a lot of Saturdays and Sunday afternoons, the main work was done.

But who were those people buried there? There were no records. The cemetery didn’t belong to anyone. It was my friend Mary Lois Ragland who said I should write a book about Asbury, that she would do the courthouse research if I’d do the rest.

So we began. She copied deeds and probate records and old wills while I did genealogical research. Soon an historic pattern emerged: just about everyone in the cemetery was kin either by blood or marriage. There were Gibsons, Nailers (the name is misspelled on the road sign), Hyneses, Cooks, Klines, Lucketts, Selsers, Whitakers, Lums, Roaches, Hendersons and others.

Through the diaries of Sophie Adams Goodrum, who wrote from the 1840s until after 1900, many of the names on the stones came alive.

Asbury was named for the Methodist bishop in South Carolina, the Rev. Francis Asbury, who sent Tobias Gibson to Mississippi Territory on a mission trip around 1798. The graveyard, however, came a few years before the church and was simply the family burial spot for the John Hynes family and was on their plantation. The oldest stones are for the Hynes twins, Margaret and Marcellus, babes who died in August 1821.

As the community grew — it was about the same age as the new settlement of Vicksburg and about 12 miles southeast — friends and relatives began using John Hynes’ graveyard until about 1829 when the Methodists established a church close by. Ironically, Hynes, who was from Ireland, was Roman Catholic. The congregation usually included some Baptists from nearby Antioch along with resident Episcopalians and Presbyterians.

Some of the most well-known ministers in the annals of Mississippi Methodism pastored Asbury. They included John G. Jones, historian of the denomination; Dr. C.K. Marshall, who is in the state’s Hall of Fame; John Lane, son-in-law of Newit Vick; Preston Cooper, who established the famous spa Cooper’s Well; and Charles B. Galloway, who became bishop of the state.

The people buried there, however, is what made Old Asbury special. Ever hear of the Rev. Randall Gibson? Probably not, but it was he and his wife, Harriet, who made the move, were the first to walk the aisle, to become the first in the state to join the Methodist Church. They were well-established in Adams County — Randall Gibson gave the land for the first college, Jefferson, in Mississippi — but the Gibsons moved to Warren County and helped found Asbury. For the Methodist denomination, they got the ball rolling in Mississippi.

Ironically, none of the older Hyneses have monuments. He died just before the War Between the States began, and she in 1882. The family had been devastated by the war — there was probably no money for tombstones.

There’s a tall stone, now crumbling, for Erastus Lum who died at the home of relatives in 1837. He had crossed the Big Black to seek medical help. He couldn’t be taken back to Rocky Springs for burial because the river had flooded. His wife died years later and is buried at Rocky Springs. Their names sound almost fictional, like something made up by Eudora Welty — Erastus and Sinai Lum.

Who was Dr. Issac Montgomery Selser’s best friend? His tombstone was erected by an unidentified person who had the words inscribed, “My best friend.” Dr. Selser was murdered by another doctor at Warrenton in 1860.

In 1843, Col. Jefferson Nailer won an election but was overshadowed in history by the man he defeated. Nailer ran as a Whig for the Mississippi Legislature, serving one term. He died Feb. 6, 1861, and was buried the next day, only a few days before the man he defeated left for his inauguration as president of a new nation, the Confederate States. Perhaps it is an irony that both men, from the southern extremes of Warren County, were named Jefferson, for the one Nailer defeated, who became his good friend, was Jefferson Davis.

Patrick Luckett was only 19 when he died just a few months after the Civil War ended, and he was buried beside his father, Samuel Luckett, who had died in 1853. Patrick, jailed by the Yankees, was a member of Bradford’s Cavalry, who were scouts.

Samuel Luckett’s stone is much more elaborate than his son’s. It’s a box tomb, marble on a brick base, which cost $235. For an additional $10, his wife, Elizabeth, had a weeping willow carved on it, and a lengthy poem cost 5 cents a letter, which came to $27.40.

The Klines were living in the Asbury vicinity by 1815, maybe before, and had probably come from Pennsylvania. During the War Between the States, the federal troops had good reason to distrust them, for they were openly defiant in their Southern sentiments, so much so that the whole family was exiled to “rebeldom,” which was Hinds County as it was still under control of the Confederacy. Annie and Emma Kline were jailed by the occupation forces, and Emma was forced to pose between two blue-clad guards, and the photo circulated to show what would happen to young women who defied the North. Annie later moved to California where she became a famous gold miner.

There are love stories at Asbury, particularly that of Kate Nailer and J. Wilkins Roach. The beautiful Kate died in childbirth, her last words being, “Good night, Father.” Her grieving husband survived but a few years and their child was reared by an aunt, Sue Roach.

The diarist, Sophie Goodrum, seems to have thrived on tragedy, for her writings are full of sad stories. There’s the account of the lady who died less than a year after her marriage and was buried on Christmas day in her wedding dress; there was Nineon Kline who died “like good old Moses, solitary and alone, None but God to sooth his dying pillow.” When Theresa Nailer died of the dreaded yellow fever, Mrs. Goodrum wrote, “Sad and lonely the hearse passes. No long procession of friends — just enough to lay her away in the dim twilight.”

There are many unmarked graves, and one of those is for Judge Alexander Montgomery who died in 1878 while visiting the community. He was an Episcopalian, so James Goodrum, a Baptist, read the burial rites from the Book of Common Prayer. Judge Montgomery made history by being the first native-born Mississippian to serve as chief justice of the state’s Supreme Court.

There are more than 30 tombstones in the 2 acre plot, and each person is a story. Asbury is one of the most historic cemeteries in Warren County, and it has been registered with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. In the last few years, helping cut the cemetery have been Matt Floriani, Terry Hedrick and Jeffrey Coleman from the Historical Society. Melvin Turner, who lives next to the cemetery, has also been helpful in clearing fallen limbs and other debris and cutting a large area. Some years ago, the United Methodist Church headquarters made a contribution.

I think one of my favorite stories about Asbury has to do with Ridgley Goodrum Bayley. Years ago, in a story for the Post, Ridgley posed with flowers and a flag for a photo at the graves of her great-grandparents. Fred Messina had his note pad ready, and he began to ask her about her ancestors. Ridgley’s reply was priceless:

“I don’t know anything about them,” she said. “All I did was descend.”

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Gordon Cotton is an author and historian who lives in Vicksburg.