Stewart Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'll tell it to you. Way out in Hopkins County, there's a piece of land with a long memory. It started with a man named Zacharias Birdwell, born in 1801, one of the early settlers of Hopkins County.

He put down roots, claimed his land, and when folks around him started passing on, that land became their resting place too. People called it Birdwell's Graveyard, simple as that. The earliest marked grave belongs to an infant, James Becton Herman, dated 1879.

But the site was being used as early as 1870, so the graveyard had already been doing its quiet work for years before that stone was ever set. Zacharias Birdwell himself, born 1801, died 1880, is among those buried there. He didn't outlast the place he'd given to his community by much.

Now, after Zacharias was gone, it fell to his widow, Polly, to decide the land's future. In 1882, Polly Birdwell deeded that land, cemetery and all, to her nephew, a man named W. A.

Stewart. And just like that, the name shifted. Birdwell's Graveyard became Stewart Cemetery, carrying a new name into a new generation.

Twenty-three marked graves rest there in total. The last burial recorded was in 1915, a woman named Mary E. Casey.

After that, the gates, so to speak, stayed closed. A small piece of Hopkins County ground, holding names from 1870 all the way to 1915, still out there telling its story to anyone who stops long enough to read the stones.

What the marker says

Located on land originally belonging to early Hopkins County settler Zacharias Birdwell (1801-1880), the nearby cemetery was first known as Birdwell's Graveyard. The earliest marked grave, that of infant James Becton Herman, is dated 1879, but the site was used as early as 1870. In 1882 Birdwell's widow, Polly, deeded land, including the cemetery, to her nephew W. A. Stewart. The burial ground, which soon became known as Stewart Cemetery, contains 23 marked graves, including that of Zacharias Birdwell. It was last used in 1915 for the burial of Mary E. Casey.