Some Northeast Mississippi Graveshelters

Several months ago, I started a project documenting graveshelters. I just thought they were so interesting, that a family would erect what’s in most cases a loving, simple structure for protection of a loved one’s plot.

I do want to mention that the super-nice people with this website know about several more sites than I, and I share my information with them as well (for instance, I found the Rogers Chapel graveshelter below). If you’d like to follow along and try to find known and more ‘unknown’ ones, they are a great resource for a nice start. I’d love to hear if you find some too!

These are pics from a visit I took to Mississippi back in December.

Shiloh Church Cemetery in Alcorn County:

Shiloh Church Cemetery, Alcorn County Mississippi

Union Cemetery in Alcorn Cemetery:

Union Cemetery in Alcorn County Mississippi

Rogers Chapel Cemetery, Tippah County:

Shiloh Independent Methodist in Tippah County:

Shiloh Independent Methodist Church in Tippah County, Mississippi

There were many folk cemetery customs going on here: ‘swept’ graves (no grass allowed to grow), mounded graves (some with oyster shells), curbed plots / coping (where they have a distinct outline), and I’ve forgotten for a moment the name of the tradition of people being buried at a certain direction, and the monument winds up being ‘backwards’ – so that they are buried behind the writing of the monument, not in front of the monument. Here are more graveshelters from Shiloh:

Since we weren’t too far away, we went over to Ripley, and overlooking the city cemetery is a monument of William Faulkner’s great-grandfather, Col. William C. Falkner (it was ‘our’ William Faulkner who was the first generation to add the ‘u’ to the last name):

Colonel William C. Falkner Monument, Ripley Cemetery Mississippi

Reverence for Faulkner (and thus, somewhat, his kin who occasionally made veiled appearances in his work) is drilled into all of us good Southern literature students.

…then it was back to Alcorn County where Mt. Pleasant Cemetery has a lot of the ‘carport’ style graveshelters along with several of the ‘house’ style. Some of those even had little short glass storm doors.