Decoration Day at Bryan’s Graveyard
Decoration Day at Bryan’s Graveyard. Cate’s Crossroads, Kodak, Tennessee. The photographer, Carlos C. Campbell (1892-1978), was a founding member of the Smoky Mountain Hiking Club (est. 1924) and a charter member of the Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association (est. 1923). Campbell was an avid hiker and often assisted Jim Thompson with his camera equipment. When Campbell won a folding camera in 1935, he began his own photography journey, taking thousands of photographs and jotting down information about each one in small notebooks. His granddaughter, Rebecca Campbell Arrants, donated this collection of photographs and notebooks from 1934 – 1940 to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Date original: 1935-05-19
—Southern Appalachian Digital Collections
Decoration day at cemetery
Gideon Thomas Laney (1889-1976), also known as Gid, was the prominent photographer for the Brasstown and Sweetwater areas of Clay County, North Carolina in the first part of the 20th century. Trained as a portrait photographer and motivated by the need for flexible work after the death of his wife Martha Creech Ison in 1929 left him a single parent, Gideon borrowed his sister’s bellows camera and began to photograph the people and events of his community. He sent his film off to be developed by Weaver Studio in Copperhill, Tennessee and later by Crisp’s Studio in Murphy, North Carolina. From the negatives, he made 6 cent postcard prints using his in-home darkroom.
—Southern Appalachian Digital Collection
Last week Decoration was held at the church where Pap and Miss Cindy are buried. I’m glad folks in my area still observe the tradition and I hope the following generations will continue it.
I figured the Southern Appalachian Digital Collection would have a couple of photos of decoration from days gone by and I was right.
The first photo looks like it was taken in a beautiful graveyard. If you follow this link you can click on the photo and enlarge it to see the details of the people’s clothing as well as the surroundings. There are some sharp dressed folks in attendance.
The second photo was likely taken somewhere close to me since Laney was from Brasstown. You can go here for a more detailed look, just click on the photo to enlarge it. There isn’t a date given for when the photo was taken, but the clothing of the people make me think it was well before the first photo. I especially like the flag that can be seen in the background as well as the various hats the numerous girls and babies are wearing.
decoration, decoration day noun An occasion on which a family or church congregation gathers on a Sunday to place flowers on the graves of loved ones and to hold a memorial service for them. Traditionally this involved singing and dinner on the ground as well as a religious service. Same as memorial day, this event was held at various times in the Smokies, usu in the late spring. The term and the occasion have been replaced by homecoming, which is usu celebrated anytime from early May to late September, with each community having its designated day.
—Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English
Last night’s video: Studying the Good & the Bad While Weeding Flowers.
Tipper
Decoration day at our cemetery is always the weened after Mother’s Day. We don’t get as dressed up as the folks in the pictures you have. Families place flowers on their loved one’s graves in the days leading up to decoration, usually the day before. Then on decoration day everyone meets at the cemetery and scripture is read and we all pray together before the meeting starts. The man over the meeting tells of the financial situation of the cemetery. Then most people give a donation. This year decoration day was particularly hard for me as my mother went to be with Jesus two days before Mother’s Day. The pictures you shared are a real treasure. Thank you and God bless. Praying for you and your followers.
These photographs of current and past memorial days bring up such deep feelings. They seem to say, “Yes, it’s true. We were all there. We lived good lives then and live still; in memories, and in reality in heaven. We WILL see each other again.”
Tipper,
I noticed all the females wore bonnets or some type of head covering and the males all wore hats.
This indicates, to me, that head coverings were an important part of “dressing up “during that time in addition to protection from the sun.
Old photos capture fascinating snippets of the time period in which they were taken.
I like your recipes and commitment to Appalachian traditions. it has been a great blessing to find your website on the Internet!
Decoration Day is alive and well in the “hills and hollers” of Eastern Kentucky “! Maybe, not so many “dinner on the grounds” events but lot’s of attention paid to the care and maintenance of small church and many stand alone cemeteries on private and public properties. Family has always had and always will have great meaning to the people in the holler……. One of my family cemeteries on the mountain still has the small grave houses of long ago tradition.
THANKS FOR THE OLD PICTURES. DO YOU HAVE ANY CIVIL WAR ERA TO SHARE? I HAVE SOME FROM ALABAMA!
Chris, I don’t have any 🙂 So glad you do have some from Alabama
What a beautiful,meaningful tradition! I’m so glad to be learning about it ! I hope it continues to grow & thrive !
Thank you for sharing about it !
Missy and three of her cousins are going tomorrow to decorate her Mamma’s grave. Decoration Day is Sunday. This has been a tradition since Yvonne died in 2018. Decoration Day there is on the second Sunday in June and probably has been for well over a century.
I wonder if the beginning of this was the old time need to bury soon but conditions were not suitable to gather for a funeral so a memorial service was held in spring and so that was also a good time to do a decoration day at the same time. Then once travel was faster and easier, the day might get moved and was no longer directly associated with a delayed funeral.
Have been decorating graves the last few weeks. Keeping up the old tradition.
My love of cemeteries and likely my passion for genealogy came from happy childhood memories of Memorial Day. While I have family buried in several rural cemeteries in Kentucky, we always had a picnic lunch on a quilt at one cemetery since not all the cemeteries were near an associated church. There were many other families doing the same. If there were artificial flowers then, I have no memory of them. People brought flowers they had picked – usually in a Mason jar of water. I remember the Queen Ann’s lace which grew wild. If you added food coloring to the water, the white flowers picked up a pastel tint. The picnic lunch was always the same: a basket of fried chicken, potato salad, sliced cucumbers and onions in vinegar, and the first strawberry pie of the season. Back then, we had strawberries only when they in season locally and their brief availability made them special… none of the giant, largely tasteless strawberries trucked in from California or Mexico. For me, a cemetery represents the promise of a joyous reunion in the future far more than the goodbyes of a temporary separation.
That’s beautiful! I will think of that now when I visit a cemetery. Thank you ❤️
Patricia, I show as much respect for a cemetery as I do in the actual church building or auditorium. I would never let my children or grandchildren “run wild” over the graves in a cemetery. In my first comment I mentioned cutting the grass and cleaning around my church cemetery. It gave me an uneasy feeling to have to walk on a grave, somehow I felt like I was being disrespectful.
Decoration Day is alive and well in my part of the country. My sister and I spent four hours raking, cleaning stones, and placing flowers on the graves of our loved ones a few weeks ago. My parents, brother, and maternal grandparents are buried in the same cemetery I visited as a child when we took big bouquets made from crepe paper. We never had a celebration in the graveyard such as dinner or singing, and I don’t recall any other family doing that either. I’m so thankful that the Historical Society is helping to maintain two of the three hard-to-reach and snake-infested resting places we visit every Decoration Day.
Such beautiful tradition. I hope and pray future generations continue it.
As a child growing up in West Virginia my parents along with my dad’s people always celebrated Decoration Day on Memorial Day weekend, so to me it was the same. It was simply a day to remember and honor all our family and friends who had passed on. If those we were remembering served in military we honored them with an American flag on their grave along with the fresh flowers we put on every loved one’s grave. I had moved to NC with my husband and daughter, but we still went up to WV on Memorial Day weekend along with other holidays until my parents passed, my father in law passed and my mother in law moved down to NC to live closer to her boys. Now days I still travel to WV once or twice a year to visit, but mostly to go by to decorate my loved one’s graves with new flower arrangements and new flags. Now that I’m older my visits may not be on Memorial Day weekend anymore but I still take time to go when I can. I’ll continue to go for as long as the good Lord allows me the health, strength and transportation to get there. I’m sure after I am no longer able to go to decorate my loved one’s graves then that will be the last time they will be decorated, which is sadly the truth of the matter. We hold tight to traditions of our people but that doesn’t always mean our children or grandchildren will and that’s just a sad fact of life.
Tipper you are blessed having daughters that hold tight to your people’s ways and traditions. I have no doubt your girls will continue your traditions years after you are not able too because they will always live close by you. I think when one moves far from where they grew up around their families they lose their cherished family traditions. I know mine has lost most all of my peoples traditions over the years since we moved from WV to NC over 40 years ago.
My church is over 200 years old so I am sure the members would do this in the past. It seems like I can vaguely remember doing something like this when I was very young. For many years we have had someone to cut the grass at the church and cemetery and keep everything neat and clean. I did this for 2 years when I was 14-16 years old in order to make me a little bit of “spending money.” I had to use a hoe to clean between the graves, there were no weed eaters or string trimmers at that time. I have been reading this morning about it being D Day and Normandy, the number of soldiers killed is unbelievable.
Randy – when my son was in high school we were fortunate to travel to France with the French Club. Normandy was one of our stops. Looking out in the cemetery at thousands of white crosses, my mind could not comprehend what it was like on June 6, 1944. Also it was an honor to stand and see Old Glory waving high in the wind.
We were not home Memorial Day weekend, so this past Wednesday we were out and about decorating our family’s graves which took us to 3 different counties. It was a pretty day and it was nice to be out putting flowers on the graves. We always talk about our memories of our loved ones who have passed, some of the memories are funny, and others are sad. I think it helps to hold them closer to our hearts and it reminds us that we will get to see them again in heaven.
This is a fascinating tradition to me. I suspect my grandparents took part in this because they still make sure to decorate loved ones graves once or twice a year. I’ll have to ask them. The closest think I’ve seen to this is planting flags on soldiers graves for Memorial Day.
I well remember those days and events. We gathered at grandma’s house after eating at the church for the older folks to visit and we kids to wrestle and explore the farm and woods. We might not see some cousins more than 2 – 3 times a year so we made the most of it.