By Rita McInerney

On a humid overcast summer day, the old graveyard appears fragile and muted in its two-acre clearing amid tall white oaks. This is Locust Grove Cemetery where Catholic settlers who came to the interior of Georgia from Maryland in 1790 and early 19th century immigrants from Ireland are buried.

Family plots of Lucketts, Burkes, O'Neills, Hartys Wards, weave a gentle pattern around uneven ground. There are no precise rows, no marble mausoleums, only worn stones with faded inscriptions, many flanked by child-size markers. At the bottom of each plot are small rocks indicating graves of slaves buried with their masters.

There is a soft peace here despite the distant hum of a sawmill. Birds exchange calls, insects drone and attack, twigs crackle underfoot. Evidence of mistreatment of this vulnerable site by time, vandals and hunters is obvious.

Along with those who destroy, there have been preservation-minded friends over the years who value the graveyard's history and work to keep it presentable.

John O'Stephenson, a member of Purification Catholic Mission in Sharon, talks about a few benefactors as he leads a visitor around. When he came to live in nearby Norwood in the mid-1970s, all the stones were down. With other members of the Knights of Columbus in Thomson he worked to straighten them as best he could.

In the early 1980s, Father John Fallon discovered the cemetery after being assigned as pastor at St. Joseph's Church in Washington. A native of County Longford, Ireland, he was interested in the number of early Irish buried in the old cemetery and shocked to see the broken, toppled gravestones and the general neglect of the historic spot.

O'Stephenson says Father Fallon "wooed" Archbishop Thomas Donnellan into giving him $5,000 to restore the headstones and fix up the grounds. Restoration complete, Father Fallon celebrated an All Souls Day Mass there on Nov. 2, 1984. The Mass has become an annual event.

While the headstones were patched together, sandblasted and put upright, there were some treasures that couldn't be restored, the stately locust trees that gave the settlement its name.

“I understand years ago everybody cut down the locust trees for fences. They last one hundred years," O'Stephenson says as he points out tree stumps here and there. Many of the gravestones were toppled in the felling of the locusts. The trees standing now are white oaks, usually found around springs, he mentions, like the old spring bordering the cemetery.

After the cemetery was spruced up in the mid-1980s, according to O'Stephenson, the manager of the Augusta company that leases the adjoining timberland wouldn't let hunters use the cemetery. This lasted about two years until a new manager took over.

"Now they come in and claim 'we've got a permit'" sit on the gravestones and otherwise use the ground disrespectfully, O'Stephenson complains.

Part of the road leading to the cemetery is still dirt. "In Bernard's time we almost got the rest of the road paved," O'Stephenson says of an old friend's efforts. A memorial to Bernard Darden, descendant of one of the early Locust Grove families, draws the eye from the dirt road. The newness of the blue Elberton marble altar on a granite pedestal is in high contrast to the timeworn stones nearby. The altar was donated in her husband's memory by "Miss Mary" Darden after Bernard's death in 1988.

O'Stephenson walks ahead of the visitor, keeping a sharp eye out for snakes. Hasn't seen any yet, and doesn't want to, he says. A retiree from the Savannah River Plant of the Atomic Energy Commission and the 11th man hired, he stayed 25 years, becoming a master mechanic in the heavy water section.

Now he grows soybeans and roses in Norwood and acts as water analyst for Warren County. In the autumn he expects to plant irises, camellias and banana shrub around the area where the old church once stood.

Signs of tree harvesting are glimpsed on the road leading to the cemetery and in the fallen logs beyond stones heaped as low walls. The 211-acre tract in Taliaferro County which includes the old cemetery was acquired by the diocese of Savannah in 1859 and transferred to the diocese of Atlanta at its establishment in 1967. A lease with the Cox Woodland Co., Augusta, signed in 1967, pays the archdiocese $800 annually. It runs until 2007.

As a direct descendant of early settlers buried in the cemetery, Jane Abbott has good reason to make the trip from Savannah for the All Souls Day Mass. Her great-great grandfather, James Harty, and his wife, Johanna, came to the United States from County Tipperary, Ireland, around 1821. When Johanna died and left two young children and a grieving husband, Mrs. Patrick Harty, wife of James' brother, traveled on horseback from Locust Grove to North Carolina where the three were living. She brought them back with her to Locust Grove where they made their permanent home.

Mrs. Abbott is a leader in the unofficial Friends of Locust Grove Cemetery which has been trying to have the cemetery re-consecrated. In a letter two years ago to Archbishop James P. Lyke, OFM, asking him to consider such a request, she wrote of those buried there: "While these stalwart Christians did not die for their faith, clearly they lived their faith and, by example, enabled their descendants to join in and aid in establishing the church in Georgia."

John O'Stephenson promises that the cemetery will be "swept clean" for the annual Mass at noon Nov. 2. He extends a general invitation and suggests "bring a picnic lunch. It's like a Protestant camp meeting."