Progress on Meadvilla Cemetery Preservation!

At Left: "BEFORE" Photo of one small pre-cleared section of the path where I've gone through with a chain saw initially and hacked out a path through the dense undergrowth.  Notice the pink flagging that keeps me on track back to the cemetery.  Even this pre-path is a huge improvement over the dense overgrowth and briars!  It took us three days of searching to even find the cemetery, and only with the help of the owners!

I made steady progress on clearing the path back to the cemetery at Meadvilla today (Sunday, March 14).  On the left I've posted before and after photos of what the initial pre-cleared path looked like and then the path completed after the final clearing using loppers, weedeater and blower. 

Photo at Left: "AFTER"  Much nicer, eh?!  I am purposefully making the path wide enough so that a 52" zero turn mower can run down through here and keep the path and cemetery mowed so that it doesn't return to this overgrown state.

Just look off in either direction and you can see what I'm having to clear a path through in order to get back to the cemetery, all of which is completely overgrown - like a jungle.  It is sad and difficult to believe that B.L.C. Wailes is buried back here and nobody seems to care.  He was easily one of the most important and talented figures in early Mississippi history!  Here is what John D. W. Guice wrote about him: Benjamin Leonard Covington Wailes – usually known as B. L. C. Wailes – personifies the Old Natchez District, one of the most historic regions of Mississippi. No other Mississippian who lived during the half century between the creation of the state in 1817 and the beginning of the American Civil War better demonstrates the economic, intellectual, and social life of the Natchez District. 

I now have cleared a path from the back lawn of Meadvilla itself back to the ridge point where the cemetery lays.  It is on the point of a ridge that forms a triangle with bayous and creeks on both sides, like an arrow.  The path is now cleared several hundred yards back to the base of that triangle.  I estimate another 75 yards of tough going and I'll be at the beginning of the cemetery itself!  Once we clear the cemetery, we can dowse for graves, mark them, GPS them, do research on the people buried there and put up signage and posts.  We will then turn all our information and records over to the Natchez Historic Society for them to archive.