Zubly Cemetery, Beech Island South Carolina

Date added: October 04, 2023 Categories:

New Windsor, near the banks of the Savannah River on the Georgia-South Carolina border in the backcountry, was settled in 1737 by the Zubly, Zellweger, Sturzenegger, Zuberbuhler, Zurcher, Meyer, Nagele, and other prominent Swiss families from Appenzell and Toggenburg. The township soon became an outpost for Indian traders such as George Galphin and Patrick Brown as well. The townships on the western Carolina frontier were laid out in order to promote trade with the Creeks, Chickasaws, and other tribes, and anchored by a series of forts or smaller outposts. Fort Moore, on the Savannah River across from Augusta, Georgia, had already been built here as early as 1715 on the site of an abandoned Indian town; it was occupied by South Carolina provincial troops until 1746 and by British regulars from 1746 to 1766. Robert L. Meriwether calls New Windsor "the most thinly settled of the townships, and though it had several leaders of some distinction, it was not strong enough to play a great part in either the defense or the development of the frontier."

Perhaps the most prominent early settler here was John Tobler (1695-1765), a self-taught mathematician, astronomer, inventor, and musician, who organized an expedition from Switzerland to South Carolina, settling in the area by 1737. Tobler served as a justice of the peace, ran a general store, operated an ironworks, and authored the first almanac published in the South Carolina colony. David Zubly, Jr. (1738-1790), for whom the Zubly Cemetery is named, was the son of David Zubly (d. 1752) and Helena Miller Zubly (d. 1754), whose family emigrated to South Carolina in 1737 with Tobler's group from Appenzell. The younger Zubly was born in Purrysburg-another important early Swiss settlement in the Carolina colony, on the Savannah River about thirty miles from Savannah, in what is now Beaufort County-the next year. He married Ann Meyer of the New Windsor settlement in 1762 and settled here, becoming a justice of the peace just before the American Revolution.

By 1750, New Windsor's importance as a trading center was eclipsed by the neighboring city of Augusta, just across the Savannah River in Georgia, and the township declined further still after the Revolution. The Zubly Cemetery's earliest marked graves date from this phase of New Windsor's history. It was conveyed on 14 May 1855 by a deed in what was then Edgefield District from Mary Ann Mills, a descendant of David and Helena Zubly, to John Clark, Samuel Clark, Ulric B. Clark, and Captain John Miller, other descendants of the Zubly family; the descendants of the Zubly, Clark(e), Meyer, Miller, Mills, Tobler, and associated families own the cemetery today.

Site Description

The Zubly Cemetery, established ca. 1790, is located in Aiken County in the vicinity of Beech Island. This rural cemetery is surrounded by farmland at the end of Forrest Drive, an unpaved road. Measuring approximately sixty-three feet by eighty feet, the cemetery is enclosed by a brick wall four and one-half feet tall. An iron gate on the west side of the enclosure allows access to the cemetery. There are fifty-eight marked graves. The oldest marked grave is dated 1798 and the most recent burial is from 1983. Though the earliest known graves are those of David Zubly, Jr. (d. 1790) and his wife Anne Meyer Zubly (d. 1795), pioneers of the New Windsor settlement for whom the cemetery is named, their graves are no longer marked.

The graves are laid out in a regular grid plan with little discernible landscaping or other planned features other than a few chinaberry, cedar, and other trees shading the edges of the cemetery both inside and outside the cemetery wall. Gravestones, most of them marble, vary from table-top tombs and other flat markers to upright tablets and obelisks. The Beech Island Historical Society has worked diligently for the past few years to clean and maintain the cemetery and its surroundings.