Visiting Abraham

Paying Homage to an Ancestor

Recently I had the opportunity to take my first research trip to the South Carolina Archives (found something!!) and the best part was taking the many highways and back roads down from Greenville, South Carolina to the Dean's Swamp Baptist Church Cemetery in Orangeburg County to find the resting place of my 4th great grandfather. We drove on almost straight roads through mile after mile of pine forests with an occasional peach or pecan orchard in between.

I began to get excited as I saw names that were familiar to me from my research, Corbett Street and New Holland Road then a right turn on Dean Swamp Baptist Church Road.

Suddenly the pines gave way to large hardwoods with spanish moss hanging down from them- Dean Swamp- then the old Baptist Church and it's fenced cemetery.

After going through the gate, we started our search. Finally toward the back of the cemetery we found the Fannins.

 

We then started looking for Abraham's name. The tombstones were so old you had to run your fingers in the grooves to try to feel the names, but no Abraham.

Then there it was, a large new looking headstone with his name on it.

Abraham Fanning came to that part of South Carolina around 1790 and was probably one of the founders of the Dean Swamp Baptist Church.  I descend from his son, John Fanning  whose mother was Narcissa McColphen, Abraham's first wife. It was John Moses Corbett Fannin, son of John and Annie Corbett Fanning who made the long journey down from New Holland, SC to join relatives in the Ramer area of South Montgomery County, AL.


It pleases me to know that Abraham Fanning still has descenants who care enough to put a new headstone at his gravesite. As long as we remember him, a part of him lives on.


Pioneer S.C.
Abraham Fanning
c 1750-1810
Son of
James and Elizabeth Fanning
Wives
Narcissa McColphen
and
Betty Burton


Recommended Reading: The Fannin "g" Family and Their Kin.

Decoration Day

Decoration Day

All of my life I have participated, in one way or another, in the Decoration Day at Fairview West Baptist Church on the 2nd Sunday of May. As a child, I was always there. As an adult, if I was living too far away, I thought of my loved ones and hoped that someone in our family had remembered them in some way. Usually a day or two before the second Sunday, Daddy would go to the Cemetery and remove anything that was growing on our graves (grass, weeds, etc.) and re-mound dirt up the length of each grave, for that was the custom at that time. We didn't have many, only Grandma and Grandpa Barfoot, Aunt Alma and Mama's Grandmother. Mama stayed home cooking pies, cakes and anything else that would allow her to show off her skills as a cook.


 

On Sunday morning, Daddy would hitch Dan and Maude to the wagon and we would all pile in, along with the boxes of food, a jug of sweet tea and fresh cut flowers, in fruit jars filled with water so we could decorate our graves. There was singing, preaching and then dinner on the grounds. Dinner was served on a long table under the trees at the back of the old white church. Brother Harvey Edwards was usually there and was always asked to bless the food. Well, Brother Harvey didn't leave anyone or anything out of his blessing, so we were starving by the time he finished (He was the preacher who married Mama and Daddy). Daddy considered himself an apple pie connoisseur and made sure that he had tasted every apple pie on the table. Then it was back in the church for singing which Daddy loved and me too, as I grew older.
 

A part of the fun of Decoration Day was seeing lots of relatives. Travel was more difficult then and this was the only time we saw some of them. Every year, Mama especially looked forward to seeing her Aunt Gene West (Nettie Eugenia Mason), her mother's only living whole sister. I remember Aunt Gene as a lovely, elegant lady with silver hair pulled back in a bun.

Decoration Day as we know it, is a tradition of the Appalachian South. In the North, people decorate their graves on Memorial Day. Here, each cemetery has it's own day. Three of our graves only had rocks as headstones, awaiting the time when there was enough money to buy real headstones with names. I knew who was buried at each rock for those relatives were important to me. Now, there are many more. My dad bought a plot in the same row with his parents, sister and Uncle Jack (Jackson Fannin).

Then, when my mom died, I became their keeper and replaced the fresh peony and magnolia blossoms with living flowers. The graves are no longer mounded with dirt but are flat and covered with grass. After my dad died, I planted zoysia grass which now covers a large area.



I still go every year just before Decoration Day and pretty up their graves. What I'm really doing is remembering them and telling myself that they still know that I care.