Yesterday Chatter and I stogged around down at Maggie’s Chapel. The church is located just down the road a ways from us. I’ve wrote about it before here on the blog and I’m working on a video telling the story of the church.
We really enjoyed our visit. It was a beautiful day. Not too cold for February. The sun was shining brightly with a cool breeze reminding us winter isn’t quite over yet.
As we walked around the graves I told Chatter the stories of the folks I knew and we wondered about the folks I didn’t know. We were amazed by the number of graves from folks who were born in the 1800s. One of them is Chatter’s great great grandfather Benjamin “Bird” Wilson.
I’ve always thought Maggie’s Chapel has a sweet spirit about it and that thought was reinforced yesterday. It was as if past generations of family, neighbors, and friends were there with us. They hovered close as I shared childhood memories of the church and were pleased when we called their names in reverence and remembrance.
There are lovely views from the knoll the little old church sits on. I imagine there are much worse places for a person’s final resting place.
Last night’s video: My Favorite Valentine from Matt & my Favorite Valentine’s Day Story.
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Hey Tipper I thoroughly enjoy EVERYTHING you post and feel like I know you as a long lost friend ❤️ In digging around my family mementos I came across some sayings my gramma Mary Alice Doverspike McGuire used to say. She was Pennsylvania Dutch and grew up on a farm in Brookville PA. Her father served in the civil war too. He was 20 years older than her mother Loretta Welsh. Gramma McGuire would say to us kids in summer “why you kids are gettin as brown as the berries”. One that I say to this day when I feel humiliated or a little embarrassed by something. I say “I feel like a penny waiting for change”. She also said red up your room a bag was a poke and when we were little she put mustard plasters on our chest if we had colds or congestion. They really worked too. Thanks for all your hard work and God bless you and your wonderful family
Hello Tipper & family. I’ve been watching both yours & your daughters channels. My husband would always say “get them southern recipes, that’s good eating’”. He passed away this Sunday at only 43yrs old. I found the love of my life, I tried cpr the paramedics & cops tried so hard. Can you all please say a prayer for my beautiful husband, Marcus Rinaldi….he is a father to 3 & a stepfather to 1. It didn’t matter to him they were all his kids. There is no other man like him to be found in this world. I miss you, my love.
Lisa-I am so very sorry he died. I can’t imagine the pain you are feeling. We will certainly be praying for you all!! I’m so sorry.
“They say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time,” This quote is attributed to Banksy but, ever since I became aware of it I tend to mention those who have gone before me more often. Just the thought of you walking through the cemetery and calling out names made me smile.
These mountains are nothing short of magnificent! We call this God’s country. It’s just like the opening picture of the mountains and it is home! Thanks for the reminder today!!
There is truly comfort and assurance walking through a Cemetery where family and friends are laid to rest. Reading their names and remembering their lives, or the stories of those who passed before my lifetime, gives me joy while strengthening the foundation of faith and life each helped lay for me.
Cemeteries are in our culture meant to be places of memories & memorials. When I visited where grandparents (I
never met) are resting, I took a small jar of my Dad’s ashes. (Cremation was his wish.) While visiting, I sprinkled the contents atop the grass & soil, to ‘reunite’ with them.
Recently I learned that in my birth state, mounds and other building efforts of the ‘native’ Americans were dug up, all in the name of progress.
Makes me feel sick thinking about it. If someone decided a highway or highrise was more important than souls at rest today and began to dig… not sure what I would or could do.
Stog is to trudge, a Scottish term. To me, to trudge is to push on though running low on energy.
My parents and grandparents are buried in church cemeteries and my in laws are buried here in a town cemetery. When we visit any of them, we end up walking around looking at all the different names and how long they lived. It saddens me to see how many children that passed away so long ago, probably from diseases of which they were no cure for and died at birth also. Makes one wonder how they could afford a headstone back in those days. There is something so peaceful about a cemetery and I was taught to never walk on the top of a grave as it was very disrespectful but sometimes it’s hard to tell where to go. We do have family buried in field cemeteries, but I love the church cemeteries the most.
I visited Maggie’s Chapel about 17 or 18 years ago. I like to stop by the old churches and visit the graveyards to learn about the people that once lived in a place. It does have a sweet spirit about it.
“I imagine there are much worse places for a person’s final resting resting place.” Oh yes, I drive by those frequently – fronting on I-35 with 24 hours a day traffic and noise… no upright markers…they have to be flat for ease of mowing. No nearby church or the place where one once stood. It just doesn’t seem right. I feel sad for people who must lay those they love to rest in such a place.
Patricia, I am sorry to say I will be buried in such a place but not because I want to be. My daughter did not want to be buried at our church cemetery and was buried in a cemetery like you describe. Because of that reason and wanting our graves to be close to one another , I will now be buried there. Many of you know my wife passed away and is buried there beside our daughter. I wish I could be buried on my property. No interstate at this cemetery but there is a very busy 4 lane highway that runs by it.
What a wonderful post today. I’m excited you’re making a video about the church and hopefully the gravesites there too. I can imagine what wonderful memories you shared with Chatter as you looked at each gravestone and walked around the church. I hope you’ll share those sweet memories with us too on the video you mentioned in this blog. We enjoy hear the stories, but really you are leaving a legacy for future generations of yours and other peoples families you share stories with and about. You are such a blessing to so many people, thank you.
Stogging beats stomping in how it sounds any day of the week! I like that word and don’t know if I’ve heard it before, but I surely do like it! To be walking in a cemetery surely makes me wonder about who the people were, what lives they lead and even what they may have been like in this life. I’m all wandering, I’ve never encountered a grave BEFORE the 1800s and my question is where is everybody from before 1800? I know the answers I always get- people before then didn’t know how to keep records when indeed they kept BETTER records of birth, death, marriages and family than are kept today proven by records in European churches themselves all these years. People before then somehow were ignorant they will say and yet built great cathedrals which cannot be duplicated although it’s been tried over and over again. I was even reading MONKEYS CHISELED THE GREAT CATHEDRALS AND WORKED WITH LAMPS TIED ON THEIR MONKEY TAILS. There’s a monkey tale and I think I see it. I mean why didn’t the smart monkey engineers put a lamp around their necks? Lol I’m telling you there’s a lot of things that don’t add up in the supposed historical accounts. These are mere ponderings to rattle the bingo cage atop the neck. That’s all as I’m not out to change anything or anybody. Blessings to all.
For the past couple of days I have been thinking of that song “I’ll Have a New Life”. Your post fits right in. We can’t do that song justice because we have no bass singer and it just doesn’t work without one. I do not live now where mine and my wife’s ancestors are buried so no genuine ‘familiar ground’ of that kind for us here. I know you are thankful for your familiar ground in and around Martin’s Creek and Wilson Holler and I am thankful you and yours have that blessing.
There is a sense of peace in these old cemeteries, and oddly I can get away from the cares of the world with visits to where so many of my ancestors rest. Not so comfortable yet with visiting more recent loved one’s final place of rest. Sounds like a wonderful time for you and Chatter, and I look forward to the video and history.
I love old cemeteries, although whenever I walk through one I always feel like I need to apologize to people for stepping on them. It breaks my heart to see a neglected cemetery.
Is this the church your girls did a video in several yrs back? I was on The Blind Pig and The Acorns YouTube channel the other and watched several videos of them singing in their teens maybe. All were so good!
I will add this and say I also get “a feeling” when I go to a cemetery, especially my church cemetery. Have any of you listened to the song “Lonely Tombs”?
Hey Randy. I have heard “Lonely Tombs” sung by the Stanley Brothers and also Hank Williams, Sr. That song sure says a lot.
My best friend and I love visiting old cemeteries especially where loved ones are buried. My grandpa used to call it “The Silent City of the Dead”. There is an old one out in a country churchyard where we both have family buried. It is one of those places where I get a very uneasy feeling and would never go to alone. My husband and I are both planning on cremation and one of the sweetest things my Mother-in-law ever said to me was that our ashes could be scattered between her grave and my father-in-law’s.
Good morning Mrs Tipper.
My friend and I explore the Allegheny range of the Appalachians. Little patches at a time.
We look down at the little towns in the hollers, along with visiting many a resting places. We are forever in wonder and amazement of the few brave pioneers that pick
a spot in the wilderness, by a water source, among creatures that will kill them,… and settle. Why?
Scarce, are the river bottoms with good growing soil; but shaded swampy pockets, rocky sunny south side , or rocky shaded north side are in abundance. Rock farmers and lumberjacks.
All of my kin are mountain people. Smokey’s and Blue Ridge.
The mountains are tough and produce a line of tough peoples. God bless them for their sticktoitness and willingness to survive; much on account of their faith in the Almighty, love, and homemade mountain music. A beautiful heritage, indeed. It’s a wonder… Blessings to you and yours.
The old country church ((Columbia Baptist Church, Honea Path, SC address) I have attended all of my life was formed in 1815. It is now over two hundred years. Many graves are from the 1800’s or for ones born back then and lived into the early 1900’s. About 5 graves are graves of Confederate soldiers. There are also graves of salves buried there and were only marked with field rocks. I know the families of many of the ones buried there. Many of them are several generations of my relatives. I cut the grass and helped take care of this cemetery when I was a teenager and saw all of the older graves. One the things that caught my attention was the number of graves for young children from the earlier years. To me any cemetery is a sacred place and the graves of ones buried there should be respected. Since my days as a teenager cutting the grass at this cemetery, I have wished I had the money it would cost to find all of the graves of the salves buried there and have them marked with some type of granite memorial.
Good story…I stopped by Ivy Log Cemetery the other day…way too many familiar names….and I will see 80 springs this year.
This post reminds me of the feeling I get when I visit the church where my Dad’s parents are buried, and where my parents have already purchased their plots, in Phoenixville, PA. There is so much history there. You have to know where the church is to find it. It’s well off the beaten path. Down the road from it is an old hotel, a house now, that was used as a hospital during the Revolutionary War. The cemetery has a large area of graves for those soldiers who died during that war. Across the driveway at the church, is a river where my grandfather, and many others, were baptized before the beautiful baptismal was built inside the church. Piano playing runs through my blood, and this old church played in a big part of that part of my family history. My great grandfather, my Dad’s mother’s father, was the pianist every Sunday service at this church when he was alive, since he was a young man. When my grandmother was young, she also played the piano for special music there, and some church services. My grandmother began teaching me to play the piano when I was four. My parents bought me my piano when I was five, it is a player piano refitted to be a regular piano. I still have it. The piano has moved all across the country with me several times. Whenever I visit the church there where my Dad’s ancestors are buried, were George Washington walked around and fought in Valley Forge, all the history comes alive to me. I can see the soldiers, hear the battle squirmishes, and imagine the women nursing the men through their injuries. I do get sad thinking that one day my parents will be buried there, too, but like my grandparents – they won’t really be there. They will be in Heaven reaping the promise of eternal life with Christ because of their faith and trust in Him. The cemetery is in a very beautiful spot. Like you said about Maggie’s Chapel – a beautiful final resting place for so many.
Donna. : )