Cornith Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll pass it along just the same. Out here in Houston County, there's a piece of ground that's been keeping secrets longer than most folks care to think about. It's called Corinth Cemetery, and if you stop and stand at its edge long enough, you start to understand that you're looking at just about the last evidence that several whole communities ever existed at all.

Corinth. Old Randolph. Old Zion.

Kennard. Center Hill. Names that once meant neighbors and supper on the table and children running between the trees.

Now the cemetery is what remains. The last witness. In the late 1850s, a community called Corinth built up near a Methodist Episcopal church and school, and folks who lived and worked in that corner of Houston County eventually found their way to this ground when their time came.

The oldest grave that anyone has been able to document dates to 1864, but the marker makes clear that burials probably began here as early as the 1850s, back when Corinth itself was still new and full of the particular noise that pioneer settlements make. What the ground holds before 1864, only the ground knows. Since the 1940s, the Corinth Cemetery Association has been the one keeping things tended and cared for, making sure that what little is left of those vanished communities stays remembered.

Five settlements. One cemetery. And a quiet stretch of Houston County soil that outlasted all of them.

What the marker says

Corinth Cemetery stands as a reminder of Houston County's pioneer heritage. It is the last remaining evidence of several Houston County settlements, including Corinth, a community that built up near a Methodist Episcopal church and school in the late 1850s. The cemetery has served as a final resting place for residents of Corinth, Old Randolph, Old Zion, Kennard and Center Hill. Although the oldest documented grave dates to 1864, burials probably occurred here as early as the 1850s. The Corinth Cemetery Association has cared for the graveyard since the 1940s.