CAPTAIN’S CREEK CEMETERY

Submitted by Michael Miller

Twp. 32N, R5E, Sect. 24. This is the relocated cemetery.

* Asterisk Notes An Unmarked Grave

***NOTES: The location of the Captains Creek Cemetery IS NOT the original location of the cemetery. The cemetery was located in front of the OLD Samuel King house on Captains Creek, which is directly across from the house that was his son’s Lee King.

Let me relate a little family history. Samuel was my 3^rd great grandfather, he married Mary Ann (Polly) Stephens, daughter of Nathan Stephen & Martha Lucinda Old, they raised their children on Captain’s Creek, in Apr. 1880 Polly died of measles, her dying request was to be buried in the front yard so her young children could remember her & play on her grave. She was NOT the first grave in the original cemetery, but she was buried near the front yard of the home.

In July of 1880, Samuel in need of a wife, wed his dead wife’s widowed sister, Sarah Amanda Stephens Berry, widow of Emery (Also making it DAMN confusing as to future generations as to exactly HOW everyone is actually related.) Samuel & Sarah also had children. In 1907 their oldest son, Uncle LeeKing, married Permelia Minor (Mellie was sister to my great grandfather, Eli Minor), &Lee & Mellie’s courtship was one of those long ago romantic stories, when he went away to college he wrote her, & upon his return he wed his childhood sweetheart, Mellie was considered a beautiful woman, & they had a child together, Noah Solomon King.

After Noah’s birth Mellie died, & Lee grieved for a number of years, & then married Lottie Ann Young. Sometime BEFORE his second marriage, he decided that the location of the cemetery was ruining or going to ruin his spring, so he decided to relocate the cemetery, he chose a spot behind the church/school, about a mile, & he began the process of digging up the graves & relocating them. The night before he was going to move the first graves, his niece & sister-in-law, Birdie LaPlant Minor, awoke from a terrible dream, she was walking into the Captains Creek Cemetery, & there was nothing but open graves & skeletons laying a strew in the cemetery. Her father told her the next morning upon reciting the dream, that Lee was moving the cemetery & he had told Lee NOT to disturb the graves of his children. That morning when her father told her, was the first that Grandma Birdie had heard about moving the cemetery.

It was during the moving of the cemetery that some strange & very odd things began to happen & some of the hardy old timers involved, were scared to death over what they witnessed. Some of the remains could not be located; time had decayed the remains of

Polly & some of her children & grandchildren buried there, then they went to move the grave of young Charlie King, a handsome young man, who died in his prime, & evidently the body had undergone some form of petrifaction, as the chains around the casket would break, & it finally took SIX team of mules to pull him out of the ground, the casket would come so far up & then it was as if some force was pulling it back down into it’s grave.

However the strangest & most frightening thing happened when the moved the grave of his wife, Mellie. Lee was sentimental & still in much grief & anguish over her passing, decided to open the casket to retrieve the one remaining material symbol of their love, her gold wedding band, upon opening the casket, the men were astonished, there was Mellie laying there in life as she had looked in death, beautiful & at peace, then within a moment of the air hitting her remains, her corpse started to blacken, the men who were present, were pretty tough old pioneer’s & had seen a lot, but this frightened them, slowly Aunt Mellie’s remains blackened & eventually turned to dust. Uncle Lee, retrieved the ring, closed the casket, & reburied her in the new cemetery. He nearly lost his mind over this incident.

BACK