Checking out cemetery ‘grave shelters’

If it hadn’t been for several internet writings, I would never have learned about Alabama’s “graveyard” history and grave shelters in particular. Nor would I have been reconnected with Joan Robinson (thanks to Whitesboro Baptist Church pastor, Allen Hallmark), the wife of a long-ago acquaintance, gospel singer Verbon Robinson of the now retired Calvarymen’s Quartet.

The internet is crammed full of valuable (and some not so much) information about most any topic. I was directed to the Alabama Historical Commission for the definition of a grave shelter: “A wood structure placed over an in-ground burial, usually with a gable roof and sides made of vertical pickets or boards. Some have boards with decorative ‘jig’ work, and a few are constructed with doors and windows to resemble small houses. Grave shelters were common in some areas of the South and are generally ‘associated with Native Americans and groups of Scots-Irish ancestry.’“

According to the website Alabama Journey Proud, grave shelters or grave houses are wooden structures that have been built over burials in Southern cemeteries for some 200 years. No one is quite sure why this tradition began, but everyone agrees that the lack of maintenance of these enigmatic structures makes them an endangered cultural artifact.

The website tells that these grave shelters mostly were erected between the 1880s and the 1930s in Alabama’s Tallapoosa and Coosa river valleys, and are vastly “under researched “ as a cultural phenomenon. The website has a fascinating 26-minute video featuring cultural geographer and Auburn University professor Dr. Greg Jeane as he visits examples of grave houses and meets the people who are working to preserve them.

Grave shelters are built to protect the burial site from the elements. Most were built simply with wood and a gabled roof supported by four poles. Research has shown there to be about 40 in our state, although there may be others in forgotten cemeteries and those whose timbers have rotted away. One of the oldest grave shelters is thought to have been built in 1853 near Thomasville in Clark County, says the website RuralSWAlabama.org. It’s made of brick with a vaulted wooden ceiling and covers six graves of the Archibald Hope family.

The only known grave shelter in North Alabama is the Jacobs Shelter in the Whitesboro Baptist Church cemetery, near Sardis City (although it’s rumored that another one exists in Etowah County).

During our visit to view this site, we met Ray Goble of Crossville, who was visiting the nearby grave of his father who was buried there in 1952. “We lived in this community in the 1940s,” he said, “and always wondered why that family had the only shelter here; it’s the only one I’ve ever seen.”

Under this shelter are the graves of Joanie’s great-grandparents, Mary Jane Upton (or Uptain) Jacobs (1869-1934) and James (Can) J. Jacobs (1865-1939). She said her family history tells that the couple lived at the corner of Leath Gap Cut-off Road and John L. Gap Road. ”Soon after her burial, he walked the mile-and-a-half trip from the house to the cemetery, every day, carrying his tool box, to build that shelter,” she said. On their monument are the words “Having finished life’s duty, they now rest in peace.”

She said the 85-year old shelter was once surrounded by an ornamental iron fence with a gate, but still has its original roof although the four posts have been replaced. Under the roof is written, “It won’t rain on Mary Jane.” That board also has the names of numerous family members — Bearden, Gaskin, Maroney, Dixon, Hallmark, Mashburn, Scott, Buster and Icybelle, among others, plus a scribbled, “If you want more descendants, just look around.”

During her telling of family history, she said the late gospel singer Jack Toney was a great-grandson of James and Mary Jane Jacobs, “Our grandfathers were brothers,” she said.

On another note, jovial Joanie told about one other family name on the board. “My grandfather, General (his real name) ‘Buck’ Jacobs (1904-1989) was the youngest of James and Mary Jane’s nine children,” she said. “Mary Jane was the granddaughter of George Washington Upton — some relatives spell the last name as Uptain — who fought in the Revolutionary War.

She laughed when telling me that the name Barrow is also in her family line: “The famous 1930s outlaw, Clyde Barrow (famous with partner Bonnie Parker), was my sixth cousin way back, but we don’t talk about him.”