Genealogical Research

As I have previously blogged, John Martin, Sr. of Ireland has been one of the hardest of my ancestors to track down, in part because there were two other John Martins who lived in Rabun County, Georgia at the same time he did, not to mention that two of those three John Martins had sons who were also either named or called John. And this brings me to today’s topic: the Case of the Mixed-Up Burial Spot.

A few years ago, I went to Mountain Grove Church Cemetery in the Germany community to visit the graves of John Martin, Sr. and two of his son John’s children, Thomas and Govie, who are buried next to him. To find the grave sites, I always look for John Senior’s stone, which was placed by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in apparent commemoration of his service in the Confederate States Army (the stone itself reads only “John Martin, Confederate States Army”). When I approached the grave, however, I was surprised to find that, since my last visit a few weeks before, a new stone had been placed at the foot of the grave in honor of Andrew J. Martin, who died in 1862.

I knew right away that someone had made a serious error. For one thing, John Martin, Sr. died after 1900, and I knew this to be his burial spot. Secondly, the Andrew J. Martin (sometimes called “John”) who died in 1862 was the son of Andrew Jackson “John” Martin who lived in Dillard and attended the Head of Tennessee Baptist Church (HoTN); A. J. Sr. was buried in the church’s cemetery. I believed the younger A. J. Martin had been buried at HoTN as well, and my suspicions were supported by a cemetery survey made in 1998 by Bill and Elaine English. I visited HoTN’s cemetery to confirm the information on the younger A. J. Martin’s tombstone as stated by the Englishes. Unfortunately, the face of the stone has eroded to the point of near illegibility; all I was able to make out was “In Memory of A. J. Martin Aug”. The English’s survey reads:

A. J. Martin; Died 11 Aug 1862; “In Loving Memory”;
“Departed this life Aug 11th 1862″

The following picture is of this A. J. Martin’s stone. While the stone’s face is in poor condition, the rest of the stone is solid and intact, which makes the flaking where the inscription should be a bit puzzling.

I’m uncertain if this erosion contributed to the mix-up in burial spots and thus the memorial stone’s misplacement, or if other factors were at work. I have never been able to determine where or if John Martin, Sr. served in the CSA, and have always wondered if the local UDC chapter had not made an error in placing a stone over his grave. Be that as it may, anyone who has done any research into the Martin families in Rabun County should know that Andrew J. Martin, Sr. spent most of his adult life in and around Dillard, which is miles by road from the Germany community where John Martin, Sr. lived contemporaneously. Not so far as the crow flies, but a long way on wagon or horseback, or even by car if you’re going down the old back roads.

At least I have a clue as to who incorrectly placed the stone, in the form of the initials running along the bottom edge. I hope one day to find these people and help them move the stone to the correct grave. In the meantime, I hope others who are researching these two Martin families will take the time to sort out their research before incorrectly assigning burial places.

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