Grave Matters

The following newspaper article was sent to me by Myron Amick at Virginia Tech. His parental home is located near the Old Stone House on "Ravens Eye Road." (Actually, I think it is currently called "Old Stone House Road.")

I had seen the Cavendish gravestone during a recent visit and had wondered what it was doing in our graveyard. Now I know!

Robert
http://users.aol.com/rtyree/a/Home.html

Beckley Post-Herald
Date: missing! sometime in the 1960's ?
Yesterday And Today
"Civil War Saw Looting, Killing In Area"

By Shirley Donnelly

After the William Tyree Cemetery was cleaned off last week, it presented a very orderly appearance.

It is located on the historic Ravens Eye Road which people today know as Secondary Road 10. It connects U. S. 19 and U. S. 60 near a point where the highways converge a mile from Clifftop.

The cemetery measures about 100 by 50 feet and is set off by a "dry" wall of rock some four feet high built of quarried stone. It is practically three feet in width and contains multiplied thousands of shaped stones that were taken from a quarry a bit back of the burial ground.

Slave labor went into the contruction of this sturdy wall that today could not be erected for less than $10,000, considering quarrying of the rock, transportation to the spot where it was used and the actual construction.

Word is that the cemetery had a gate that opened onto the James River and Kanawha Turnpike which ran immediately in front of it. This salley port opening is distinguished by short flanges that extend out to the berm of the old thoroughfare which ran a bit higher up the hillside than the present highway.

Within the walls of the cemetery are white oak trees two or three centuries old. The largest is four or five feet through at the base and has been struck a number of times by lightning bolts which have greatly marred it.

While looking over the cleaning job at the cemetery, the epitaph on one of the marble slab markers was noted: "Andrew S. Cavendish, Died Sept. 12, 1863, Aged 20 Yr's, 9 m's & 17 d's." According to Hugh Smith, a teacher at Clifftop Elementary School and one of the best informed persons on the history of that community, Cavendish was "bushwhacked" Sept. 12, 1863.

He was shot in the back "by one of Thurmond's men," according to another local history authority over there. He bled to death in the kitchen of the Old Stone House. Smith avers that nobody knows who shot Cavendish but that he was shot because he was a Union sympathizer, a dangerous idea along the Fayette-Nicholas border during the 1861-65 trouble.

...

[More follows, but not of particular interest to Tyrees.]

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