Southern Cross of Honor

I had a few minutes to explore an old cemetery this past weekend.   It's one of those things that is interesting to me.  Sometimes you pick up on pieces of history as you walk a cemetery.  The number of children that a family had, the wealth or importance of families in a community, maybe how old were people that died during a time period.

This cemetery, near Secona Baptist Church in Pickens, SC had a number of interesting features.  One that caught my attention was in the back part of the cemetery, away from the current church building, there was a large number of C.S.A. grave markers.

These are crosses representing that the person served honorably in the Confederate Army.   Years ago, these awards were usually made of metal but have been replaced to reduce the temptation for thieves.  I've seen many of these crosses in older cemeteries across the state but I noticed a larger grouping of them in this place.

I guess that's the piece of history I gathered from my walk today.  I haven't done any additional research, but during my walk today it seemed that this was a community that was specifically touched by the war.  These men didn't necessarily die in the war (most that I looked at did not), but they would have been away serving during the war.   That must have created a tough situation in a rural community of the 1860's.

I was out there for about fifteen minutes on my walk and that was long enough for this cemetery to begin telling a story.  It was long enough to pick up on pieces of history.