Church Graveyard & Memorial Garden
There have probably been burials at Hickory Neck ever since the original building was completed around 1738 and the yard was walled in with brick in 1743. The now well-known sketch of the academy building done in 1862 by Union cartographer Robert Knox Sneden included numerous broken gravestones on the west side of the building. Mrs. Lucy James, who had been a student at Hickory Neck School from 1893 to 1896, recalled in 1934, how the older boys frightened the younger boys by telling them that they would put them under the large flat gravestones in the yard. Although these grave markers are now all gone, there is sufficient reference to say that we have long had a cemetery at Hickory Neck.
After church services were resumed on a regular basis in 1915, there were a few burials on the east side of the church building, but there does not seem to have been any formal cemetery lay-out until 1980. At that time, the congregation was beginning to grow and it was felt that cemetery plots should be laid out and offered for sale to our parishioners and their families. A cemetery committee was formed, the area was platted, rules were drawn up and burial privilege certificates were granted to those who purchased plots. At that time, it was also decided that there would be no new burials to the west and north of the church since it is thought that there are many now unmarked graves already there. The cemetery section laid out in 1980 is now sold out.
In 1992, in keeping with changing customs, a Memorial Garden was designed and established to be the repository for cremains to be returned directly to the earth without use of urns and vaults. A large granite monument was erected with a bronze plaque that lists the names and dates for those interred in the Memorial Garden.
When we acquired additional land for expansion, a section was incorporated in the overall site plan to enlarge our cemetery. In 2007, we had the new section of the cemetery surveyed and platted, and early in 2008, we began to offer plots for traditional burials and half plots for the interment of one or two sets of cremains in urns (and vaults, if desired). Copies of the rules and current prices are available from the Cemetery Committee by contacting the church office.
