On Friday, I wrote about a small, obscure civilian cemetery up at McClellan that I enjoy snooping around in. It's a beautiful place. It's adjacent to the larger military cemetery. In the course of my column, I identified a few graves by name and wondered if they were related, and asked the question, why were they buried here?
You can read my Friday column here.
An answer to my questions has arrived from a member of one of the families represented at the cemetery. Below is the response I received.
To answer your questions about the Reaves buried adjacent to the military cemetery at McClellan:Cool, huh? Now we know.
The older portion is New Hope Primitive Baptist Church cemetery. The church was removed shortly after 1912 when the federal government bought the land.
David Reaves, Emory Reaves and William McGuire Reaves were all brothers and were the sons of William Reaves and Narcissa Chandler Reaves. William and Narcissa had 7 sons who served in the Confederate army. The previous three mentioned are buried on McClellan; another, John Harrison Reaves, is buried at Four Mile cemetery; James W. Reaves relocated to Texas; Carter Hill Reaves, who donated land and lumber for the construction of "Reaves School" in NW Jacksonville and which was eventually replaced by Roy Webb School.
Carter Hill is buried in the Green Cemetery on Merrellton Road in J'Ville but the marker is missing and the last son, Rev. Ira Jackson Reaves, is buried in Macedonia Baptist Church, in Cleburne County.
The Reaves family came from Georgia and settled on farm land that is now known as McClellan. Each had separate acreage. William's farm was located only 1/2 mile from the New Hope Primitive Church and cemetery. There are two rows of Reaves in the cemetery, a Chandler family row, the Reidenger family row and the Bonds family row. The Reaves, Chandlers, Reidengers and Bonds are all related by marriage.
This is probably more than you wanted to know but there has been extensive Reaves family research done by W. Patrick Reaves of Munford. His published book is entitled THE RYVES-RIVES-REAVES FAMILIES OF EUROPE AND AMERICA.
