With this letter I will report on my delineation of an abandoned cemetery on your family's property off of State Highway 138, about 2 miles south of Monroe, in Walton County. I appreciate you meeting me at the cemetery and helping me with the delineation.
As we briefly discussed, I am a professional archeologist (BA 1974, UGA; MA 1984, UGA; RPA) who has been conducting archeology on sites and cemeteries in Georgia since 1974. Our firm has delineated over 25 cemeteries and has exhumed and moved over a dozen. I was involved in or directed most of these cemetery projects. In addition to my professional work with Southeastern Archeological Services, I am president of the Oglethorpe County historical society, where I directed the location, delineation, recordation and publishing of 452 cemeteries in that county.
The cemetery on your property is identified in the book Walton County, Georgia Cemeteries
(West), published by the East Georgia Genealogical Society in 2002 (see attached excerpt). It is labeled as the Cooper Family Cemetery, but the text states that one person believed it may be the old Sardis Baptist Church cemetery. EGGS could find no verification of this. A modem Sardis Church is about 1.8 miles to the north-northwest, just outside of Between. The book records five graves with inscribed tombstones and estimates that there are between 80 and 100 other graves, marked by linear depressions or field stone markers. Death dates range from 1893 to 1906 on the four stones with dates.
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