Rodney Cemetery
Jefferson County
Mississippi
The pictures on this page were taken by my son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter on a
recent trip to Claiborne, Jefferson and Adams Counties.  They visited historic churches,
cemeteries and a synagogue in Port Gibson.  They strolled through the haunting ghost
towns of Rocky Springs and Rodney and visited their ancient cemeteries.

They took photos in cemeteries that author Eudora Welty photographed in the 1930's, when
they had already been abandoned by towns that had all but ceased to be.  And they wondered
at the fragile nature of the monuments we build, believing that they will last forever.

-- Nancy (May, 2019)
Rodney Cemetery is on the crest of a hill behind Rodney Presbyterian Church.  Rodney,
Mississippi was a prosperous town in the 19th century.  It was the busiest river port
between New Orleans and St. Louis and it missed becoming the capital of the Mississippi
Territory by only 3 votes.  The Civil War, fires and yellow fever epidemics took their toll,
but Rodney's population started declining in earnest after the Mississippi River changed
course in the late 1860's, leaving a river port town with no river.

People say there's something very moving about the ghost town of Rodney.  And there's
something deeply spiritual about the old cemetery on the hill, with its tombstones askew,
broken and leaning this way and that, in a losing struggle to remain as dignified as they
were when placed by loving hearts all those many years ago.
-- Nancy
Scotland's flower, the thistle, is on James Stewart's tombstone;
he was born in Scotland in 1822; died in 1894.
Lawrence Burkley, born in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, in 1815; died in 1902.
Catherine Burkley, born in Lenzkirch, Germany, in 1820; died in 1902.
Nuna Ogden Castleman, born in 1849, died in 1872; wife of
Thomas Castleman; daughter of Judge R. N. Ogden.
John Engbarth, born in Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany, in 1833; died of yellow fever in 1878.
Alexander McCullough, born in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, in 1821, died in 1863.
Charle Engbarth, born in New York, in 1858; died in 1862.
The top of the hill ahead was crowded with winged angels and life-sized effigies
of bygone citizens, standing as if by count among the columns and conifers, like a
familiar set of passengers collected on the deck of a ship on which they all knew
each other...bona-fide members of a small local excursion, embarked on a voyage
that is always returning in dreams.  -- Eudora Welty
The old Rodney cemetery is there still, like a roof of marble and moss
overhanging the town and about to tip into it.  -- Eudora Welty, 1930's