Lindsay Cemetery, Due West South Carolina

Date added: October 28, 2023 Categories:

Lindsay Cemetery, established ca. 1820, is the first cemetery in the Due West vicinity of what was then Abbeville District, and is associated with seventeen prominent early families of Abbeville District (later Abbeville County), from the early through the late nineteenth centuries. It is an excellent intact example of an early-nineteenth through early-twentieth-century cemetery reflecting typical burial customs and gravestones of the period.

Lindsay Cemetery, long associated with the Lindsay family of Abbeville District though there are no marked graves of Lindsay family members in it, has been called "Lindsay Cemetery," "Lindsay Graveyard," or "Lindsay Burying Ground" since the mid-nineteenth century.

The first marked grave in the cemetery is that of John Murphy, Sr. (1746-1820), a native of Tyrone, Ireland.

The Lindsay Cemetery was owned by, or at least surrounded by land owned by, planter Joseph Ellis (1810-1890) as early as 1862, when he buried his sons; James Robert Ellis (1837-1862) and William Marshall Ellis (1842-1862), who were killed in action and died of disease in the Confederate army, respectively.

In 1872 another of Ellis's sons, John Robert Ellis, asked the Session of the Due West Associate Reformed Presbyterian (A.R.P.) Church for assistance in having the cemetery cleaned and maintained, the Session agreed to pay half of those expenses.

M.G. Donald bought the cemetery from Joseph Ellis's estate in 1886. In 1890 he sold the 1.25-acre tract to the Trustees of the Lindsay Graveyard: W.T. Cowan, Tully G. Ellis, T.L. Haddon, and Luther M. Pratt.

There was continuing interest in the 1880s and 1890s in maintaining the cemetery. Advertisements in the Abbeville Medium in 1888 and The Press and Banner in 1889 asked local citizens to help clean the cemetery, remarking, "The old Lindsay graveyard will be cleaned off … Bring your tools," and "All parties interested are requested to meet at the Lindsay Burying Ground … for the purpose of removing the rubbish and putting the cemetery in better condition."

The last marked burial in the cemetery is the grave of M.M. Ellis (1837-1927).

The trusteeship of the Lindsay Cemetery evidently lapsed at some point after M.G. Donald's sale to the trustees in 1890, but in 1992 Sam Clark, then the owner of Joseph Ellis's old plantation which had included and surrounded the cemetery, led an effort to restore and maintain the cemetery once more.

Annual cleanup efforts were led by Sam Clark and his wife Sara and Jenny Hagan Kelly and her husband Dan Kelly. Jenny Hagan Kelly helped organize "Friends of the Lindsay Cemetery," an informal committee which paid for a new survey and negotiated with Joe Clark, the property owner, granting access to the cemetery. In 2007 the Friends of the Lindsay Cemetery chose five trustees to assume formal responsibility for the maintenance of the cemetery: Jenny Hagan Kelly, chair; Susan Hagen, Martha Holmes, Howard Nickles, and Lowry Ware.

Among the notable persons buried in Lindsay Cemetery are:

Col. Isaac Cowan (1764-1831), planter and ruling elder in the Due West Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church;

Rev. Augustus Elmore Ellis (1826-1855), Associate Reformed Presbyterian minister; born near Due West, Ellis graduated from Erskine College in 1845, studied theology, and was licensed as a minister by the Second Presbytery at Due West in 1846; after serving as a missionary in Kentucky, he helped found the Doraville Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church and an associated school in Dekalb County, Georgia, serving there from 1849 until his death in 1855;

Sgt. James Robert Ellis (1837-1862), overseer and Confederate noncommissioned officer in Company G, 1^st South Carolina Rifles (Orr's Rifles), serving in the Army of Northern Virginia; enlisted as 1^st corporal, 1861; elected 4^th sergeant, 1862; killed in action at Second Manassas, Virginia, 29 August 1862;

John E. Ellis (ca. 1794-1859), Abbeville County magistrate and planter at both the Ellis family plantation on Chickasaw Creek, a branch of Little River, and another plantation known as "Groggy Springs," on Jobs Creek, a branch of Long Cane;

John Lindsay Ellis (1794-1879), planter on Clark Creek near Due West: Joseph Ellis (1810-1890), planter, father of James Robert Ellis and William Marshall Ellis;

Pvt. William Marshall Ellis (1842-1862), student and Confederate soldier in Company G, 1^st South Carolina Rifles (Orr's Rifles), serving in the Army of Northern Virginia; enlisted as a private, 1861; died of typhoid fever at General Hospital, Camp Winder, Richmond, Virginia, 14 July 1862;

Lt. Benjamin Milton Latimer (1832-1862), physician, farmer, and Confederate officer in Company G, 1^st South Carolina Rifles (Orr's Rifles), serving in the Army of Northern Virginia; enlisted as 2^nd lieutenant, 1861; mortally wounded at Gaines' Mill, Virginia, 27 June 1862; died of wounds at Richmond, 13 July 1862;

James R. MacAdams (d. 1862), farmer and Confederate soldier in Company G, 1^st South Carolina Rifles (Orr's Rifles), serving in the Army of Northern Virginia, enlisted as a private, 1861; died of typhoid fever at Dill's Farm Hospital, Richmond, Virginia, 5 July 1862;

Joseph Pratt (1768-1826) a planter and miller, brother of James Pratt; their father William (d. ca. 1797) owned Pratt's Mill, on nearby Little River; Pratt's Mill was the scene of an action between Loyalists and Patriots during the American Revolution in October 1781, after which Tories burned the mill; William Pratt rebuilt the mill and his son Joseph Pratt operated it for many years;

Sgt. Stephen Langdon Pratt (1840-1862), Confederate noncommissioned officer in Company G, 1^st South Carolina Rifles (Orr's Rifles), serving in the Arm Amy of Northern Virginia; enlisted as 3^rd sergeant, 1861; died of pneumonia at Richmond, Virginia, 5 June 1862;

John F, Simpson (d. 1865), farmer and Confederate soldier in Company F, Holcombe Legion, South Carolina Infantry, serving in the Army of Northern Virginia; enlisted as a private, 1863; captured at Jarratts Station, Virginia, 8 May 1864; died of variola in a prisoner of war camp at Elmira, New York, 19 January 1865;

and William J. Stevenson (d. 1862), farmer and Confederate soldier in Company F, Holcombe Legion, South Carolina Infantry, serving in the Army of Northern Virginia; enlisted as a private, 1861; furloughed home to 4 Abbeville District, February 1862; died of measles and pneumonia at home in Abbeville District, March 1862.

Site Description

Lindsay Cemetery, sometimes called Lindsay Burying Ground, is located on a dirt road just off Lindsay Cemetery Road (S.C. Sec. Rd. 1-39), approximately 1.5 miles southeast of Due West, in Abbeville County, S.C.

The cemetery, located within a larger parcel of surrounding acreage, is enclosed by an elaborate four-foot high cast iron fence measuring 150' x 130'. The fence, featuring Gothic pointed arches and topped by a series of spearpoints, has large floral finials decorating its four corners. The double-width gate on the front of the enclosure is inscribed "LINDSAY BURIAL GROUND" on its top rail, which is surmounted by decorative scrollwork. The large 11' x 7'9" wrought iron arch over the gate, supported by double posts topped by spearpoints and inscribed "LINDSAY 1858," was added to the gate in 2004, in an effort to repair the damage done by vandals. This arch was designed by Howard Nickles, a trustee of the Friends of the Lindsay Cemetery.

Lindsay Cemetery, in a clearing at the end of a dirt road, is on a low rise, bordered on three of its four sides by woods and sits between two small branches that drain into nearby Chickasaw Creek. It contains approximately 107 graves with inscriptions, approximately sixty graves marked with stones or rocks, and an unknown number of unmarked graves. The marked graves are predominantly headstones and footstones, most of them marble tablets although obelisks and table-top tombs are also present. The earliest marked grave is from 1820 and the most recent marked grave is from 1927, but most graves date from 1829 to 1892. The stones are arranged for the most part by nuclear or extended family units within the cemetery boundaries, but without formal stone, brick, or iron plot enclosures. The cemetery contains no formal landscaping or plantings.