True Southern Greens

I have a good friend who talks seriously of being buried in his backyard. Apparently it is perfectly legal in Tennessee and being a true southerner he feels it is his right.


While visiting relatives in Alabama recently I made a detour to find the graves of several distant relatives.

Judith Anthony married William Green in 1797 in Warren County North Carolina. They moved to Wilkes County Georgia where he died in 1805 leaving her a widow with several young children.

Two years later she married Robert Ware and moved to Montgomery, Alabama. They owned a large tract of land and operated a ferry over the Alabama river.

A couple blocks off Wares Ferry Road in Montgomery I found the Ware - Green family cemetery where Judith and several of her children and grandchildren are buried. The large monument is for Robert Ware, who was a Revolutionary War veteran.

The cemetery is in the back yard of some folks who didn't even know it was there when they bought the house. The cemetery had a lot of tall brush and it had been years since anyone tried to maintain it. I guess the realtor, if they knew it was there didn't consider a family cemetery as a selling feature so the buyers didn't know until they cleared the brush it was there.

To their credit they have taken over maintenance and it is now in very good condition.