DANIEL CEMETERY,  BEAR CREEK PIKE, MAURY COUNTY TENNESSEE

What area views? With visibility being less that five feet in some places there are no credible cemetery views here. There are only photos showing the overgrowth. We are looking at a dirty brown stone in the center that may mark a grave. On our right is the trunk of a massive Elm tree. We also see here Saw Briars, Hedge, rotten limbs and massive roots. All that is dominating the landscape and cemetery. 
There is a cycle to all of this. The typical cemetery has traits that enrich its soils and that over time causes giant trees to spring up and dominate the landscape. They eventually die and rot further enriching the soils and that springs forth an abundance of brushy shrub type growth that densely covers the cemetery much more so than the surrounding areas. The only thing that can interrupt that cycle is human intervention to clean the place and spread the nutrients to other surrounding areas away from the cemetery.

This is about the cleanest photo you will see here and results from about 10 minutes of brush clearing. We are inside the wrought iron fence looking across the E.T. Hardison Memorial southward at the bottom toward a fieldstone that marks a grave in the same row about 10 feet south of the Hardison memorial. Mr. Fred Hawkins says there are about 15 to 20 of these fieldstones but this one may not be for a slave since it is inside the wrought iron fence. Often times the newborn infants did not receive formal markers and there were many children born that did not survive during the 19th century.

This is a typical view of what I found and shows the density of the brush and how difficult it is to negotiate ones way around. One can advance a path about 3 feet in 10 minutes and that is about all. I can safely say no one has visited this cemetery in years.
Photos by Wayne Austin 5 Aug 2008.