Kinsey South

"Kinsey South Cemetery"

Cemetery = "Kinsey South Cemetery" (stand-in name)

Vicinity = Wakulla S

Status = not located

Community = white

Laura Kinsey Smith says that her father Fred Kinsey (b. 1914) showed her in her childhood a site or area a little south of Kinsey Rd. where there are graves of his kin. She says that there were no grave markers to be seen even then, and she cannot now identify a precise site. She points out a place where the cleared corridor of the high-tension powerline that runs alongside the Tallahassee-St. Marks bike trail reaches the lowest ground about 3/8 to 1/2 mile south of Kinsey Rd. To the south the land rises abruptly from this often-ponded spot. She says that someplace around this pond is where her father indicated (she didn't make clear whether he had been able to point to a precise place that she cannot now recognize). He cannot now communicate as well as formerly, but he says that the powerline was cleared over the cemetery. Twin poles designated W31, these on low ground, stand closest to the place on the powerline where Laura Smith points.

Laura Smith also indicates her supposition that an unsold "last" (?southernmost) lot in Buck Forest Subdivision, just west of the powerline, contains the graveyard and that it remains unsold because of knowledge that the graves are on the lot. (Buck Forest, which also contains the marked Chaires or Cates Cemetery, does extend perhaps this far south of Kinsey Rd.; the vicinity of Lots 3 and 4, Block A, these on the east side of Pine Lane, would be indicated by this information.) All the area that she indicates is in the NW1/4 of Sec. 27, 3S, 1E.

Henry B. Roberts of Woodville, a St. Marks native, reports that his grandfather George Roberts, who died around 1935, was buried at a place not far from Kinsey Rd., and knows that the powerline is thought to have passed over or by the graves (Mr. Roberts has worked in servicing the powerline in that vicinity at some time). While Laura Smith believes, from what her father said, that there are perhaps half a dozen graves at the site that she reports, she doesn't have any names of persons. However, she says it's her understanding that Henry Roberts's grandfather is one of them. Henry Roberts cannot say on his own whether the site would be north or south of Kinsey Rd. Nevertheless, his information is not inconsistent with Laura Smith's report of the site south of Kinsey Rd.

Whether this cemetery that evidently exists in an obliterated or indistinguishable condition a little south of Kinsey Rd. could be a site recorded by the 1940-41 veterans' graves registration is one of the questions remaining. That registration placed the Stewart Cemetery 5/10 mile southerly beyond the presently known Chaires or Cates Cemetery, both sites accessed by the same road existing in 1941. And it placed the Kennedy Cemetery 6/10 mile southerly beyond Chaires or Cates along that road. The Stewart information is brought into serious question by a contradictory land-section datum also given in the registration�a datum that comes much nearer matching the known location of a graveyard north of Wakulla Station that is known by the name Stewart. The place that Laura Smith generally indicates does lie about 7/10 to 8/10 mile south of the Chaires or Cates Cemetery. The route of the road that earlier connected the two or three cemeteries recorded for this vicinity in 1941 may not be identifiable any longer.

There is no particular indication that the place pointed out by Laura Smith could correspond with another site listed as "Kinsey West"; she does not report her father's saying anything of limerocks marking the few graves he told her of here. That site is, however, evidently a third or fourth graveyard in this vicinity. This complex of reported sites is unresolved, except the Chaires or Cates site. There may be fewer than four actual sites (data given in 1940-41 for one, the Stewart site, is evidently confused, as stated above).

Date of site report narrative - January 2002

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