Living with history in the backyard.

Here in North Carolina, public cemeteries are not as wide spread as they are in the north. It is more common to have a family plot just outside your door or in the middle of your field under the 150 year old pine tree.
When I first moved to North Carolina, I was astonished to see a family cemetery in the field or sometimes just on the other side of the garage. I suppose nothing made more sense than being buried on the land you had and your family had worked for generations. In the north that w=is how many cemeteries started. The one in Wyandotte, Michigan started when a young girl in the area dies and needed a burial place. The landowner had previous set a section of his land aside where he had buried several family members and opened up the area to local residents who needed a place to bury their family members. It was at a time when Wyandotte was transitioning from a agricultural society to one more “urban” and many farms had been divided into tracts for housing.
Here in North Carolina, I imagine it was much the same until a few years ago. When your family member died, you just contacted the authorities and filed the required documents for a death certificate and went out back and dug a hole for a final resting place of your loved ones. Something I found even more astonishing is many of these family cemeteries are still active.
When I came to North Carolina in February 2009, I rented a room in a singlewide trailer in Selma. Jim is a great guy and we were fortunate that we had similar outlooks and established a wonderful relationship that we have maintained to this day. Eventually I found a house to rent 25 miles north in Zebulon. Now if you are fans of that Tru-TV show LIZARD LICK TOWING, you pretty much know about Zebulon.
We lived on Carlyle Road just north of US 64. One day on the way to the convenience center, aka dump, I passed a small cemetery on Thomas Arnold Road. I see a canopy standing over a pile of dirt. That was when I realized these small family cemeteries were still being used. Later I would pass another in Bailey. This had me thinking about how complicated we had made the act of dying in the north. Here in the south it was as easy as wheeling your loved one out back.