Purify Bay Road

"Purify Bay Road Cemetery"

Cemetery = "Purify Bay Road Cemetery" (stand-in name)

Vicinity = Medart

Status = not located

Community = unknown

Willard Carter (b. 1920's) of Medart said in August 2001 that his mother, now deceased, told him of a cemetery beside Purify Bay Rd. near where Carter Rd. goes off to the west, and thus near the north line of the SMNW Refuge. He said that he had gone some years back and looked but had found nothing. This could be a second independent report of a cemetery reported by Nat Whaley. Mr. Whaley says that his father, Rev. Johnnie Whaley (d.1971), had definite recollection of a cemetery of the Durrance family in a location just south of the cattlegap that lay across Purify Bay Rd. at the north boundary of the Refuge (thus at a site just inside the Refuge). Mr. Whaley says that his father tried to again locate the graveyard, consulting the Refuge ranger in the process, but could not locate it. He says that Rev. Whaley indicated that the feature lay on the west side of the road.

It is unlikely that a cemetery in or near the north line of the Refuge was the same one recorded as Durrance Cemetery in the 1940-41 veterans' graves registration. That north line is only about one mile south of a departure from US 319 - far less than the datum given in the veterans' graves registration. (See a separate report above for the lost Durrance Cemetery of the 1940-41 record).

A Nichols cemetery established in 2003 beside Purify Bay Road at Posey Road, a short way north of Carter Road, is not relevant to the question.

Date of site report narrative - October 2001

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