This cemetery is located just northwest of Cherokee, Colbert County, AL. My (Jack) wife's grandmother, Lula Harris, owned this property for a short time around 1902. At that time
the farm consisted of 715 acres. Lula was only about 29 years old and we first assumed that she must have inherited it from some relative. We knew it was not from her parents
who both died young in North Carolina around 1881. After doing a lot of searching, we found that this Harris family had no connection with hers unless maybe back in England
prior to 1600. We finally found that Lula was living in the Cherokee area because after her parents' deaths, she went to live with her aunt, Sophronia Hearne, and her husband,
Thomas Alexander Sides, who had moved there from Stanly County, N.C. prior to 1860. All moved to Hill County, TX about 1908. At that time T. A. Sides and his wife sold
about 2,600 acres of land in several plots mostly south of Cherokee and four lots in Cherokee.
When we first saw the cemetery, we were surprised at the elaborate markers. We had expected to see some vertical slabs with writing that was mostly eroded away. Most of
these pictures show the general arrangement. They were taken in 1997. At that time the field was used as a pasture and the cattle kept it in good shape. The owner told
us that he bought the farm in the 1970s and at that time the cemetery was in very bad condition. There had been an old barn located near the cemetery and it had been
bulldozed down and pushed into the markers. He cleared away the debris and rebuilt the markers as best he could. There were a couple of markers that he could not find
their original location and they were lying on the other markers. The last time we were in the area was 2001 and at that time he had quit running cattle on the land and
had it leased out to a farmer who was growing hay. We looked at the property from the Natchez Trace Parkway and it was so grown up that we could not locate
the markers.
The 1997 land owner, Arthur Woodis, lived in Cherokee and was very cooperative when I contacted him. He led us out to the cemetery and showed us the abstract for the property
going back to when it was owned by an Indian Chief. Woodis phone number is 205/359-6865 if he still owns this property. Jack Munson can be contacted at, but does not claim (wife) to connect
with this set of Harris's: <JMunson@Hot.RR.com> 2 Jan 2013.
