SPRING EDITION 2003
PARTIAL RESTORATION OF THE OLD STREET GRAVE YARD IN MITCHELL COUNTY NORTH CAROLINA
by Hayden Street
Standing in the old Street Cemetery ( from left to right) are Richard and Linda Hall, Ruth Dillinger Street (Joe's mother) and Joe Street.
When you get to Buladean, North Carolina, just south of the Tennessee border, be sure and visit the Old Street Cemetery. Some of our hard working Street Cousins have recorded and partially (no stone reconstruction) restored the Old Cemetery on the hill above the confluence of Beech and Big Rock Creeks adjacent to SR 226. Two developers, one from Mitchell County and the other from New York State, have subdivided the Old Simon Thomas Street Plantation into 5 acre tracks and have built new gravel roads on the old homestead. One of the new gravel roads goes to top of the hill and allows you to drive right to the old cemetery. As a result of the platting we found 2 more old Street graveyards on the property. When you visit these grave yards, if you want to drive about 2 hours south to Rutherford County, North Carolina, you can see the grave of Simon Thomas' father, Thomas Street. It is one of many unmarked, except for a stone, graves on Thomas' original plantation in the First Little Broad River Valley. Another 6 hours north near Lynchburg, Virginia, you can visit Thomas' father's, Anthony Street, grave. It is the one in the picture on my web page. You can read details on how to reach these graveyards in my “In Search of Series” for Anthony, Thomas and Simon Thomas Street in past Street Newsletters.
Standing on the original home site of Simon Thomas Street on Simon's original Toe River Valley plantation settled about 1819 are (from left to right) are Ruth Dillinger Street, Bill Greer, and Linda Hall. Note the old chimney still standing.
Once again the hard work of our Street Cousin Bill Greer has resulted in significant findings about the ancestors of Simon Thomas Street. This time he had some very good help. He needed it as the clearing, cleaning and recording of the Old Street Cemetery was a lot of work. Joe Street and his Mother Ruth, and Linda and Richard Hall assisted Bill. It took all of them in a concentrated effort to accomplish this very large task. Most of the grave yard is done. There is a small part of the graveyard, the west side, that still needs to be done. This has a few inscribed stones yet to be recorded and more uninscribed stones. This part of the graveyard may be very interesting as I believe this may be where the black's graves are located. Winter has closed down work in the graveyard until spring.
The title search for the development showed that 625 acres of Simon Thomas’ original plantation consisting of all of the Beech Creek Valley is still in tack, except for 125 acres along the mountain tops of Beech Creek Valley. This land was taken by the federal government during the 1930s and added to the surrounding National Forest. The remaining 625 acres is now being subdivided and sold to whomever can afford the $99,000 lot price for each lot. Unfortunately, this is too expensive for me. I would love to buy the site of the Old Street Cemetery and another site about a mile west up Beech Creek, the site of Simon Thomas’s original log house and another Street Cemetery. We found only the chimney of the old log house still standing. Straight up and on top of the very steep hill to the south of the chimney and Beech Creek is one of the newly found Street Cemeteries. When I visited the hard working group of Street Cousins at Simon Thomas’ old plantation on 23 November 2002 were able to find and visit the Old Street Cemetery and this new old street cemetery. Even though it was a gorgeous fall day, time did not allow us to find and record the third Street cemetery on the old plantation.
So far, In the Old Street Cemetery we have located about 100 stones and recorded 93 of them. There are many more graves there with stones missing. To me the saddest missing stone is the stone of Simon Thomas Street. This is the stone described in my earlier article about Simon Thomas Street and the stone in my picture of the Old Street Cemetery on my web page. It is gone. We all looked for it; some several times. When I got there I framed the area of the picture I took during my visit in October 1999. There was a only a patch of ground where Simon’s stone was when I took the picture. If someone has borrowed the stone, please bring it back. The Old Street Cemetery is now on the plat maps and will exist for at least another century. The stone will be safe there, once recorded, and can be visited by all of us. (Click below to see the names on identified graves).
CLICK HERE FOR GRAVE IDENTIFICATION
ARTICLES IN THE SPRING 2003 PRINTED EDITION