TOMBSTONE INSCRIPTIONS FROM BLACK CEMETERIES IN MADISON COUNTY, TENNESSEE, compiled by Jonathan K. T. Smith

COPYRIGHT, Jonathan K. T. Smith, 1995

Special thanks go to Jonathan K. T. Smith for his work to preserve and share this information about black cemeteries in Madison County and for giving permission to convert this work to web pages.

MERIWETHER CEMETERY

            Located in west-central Madison County. Situated about 90 feet south, in a field, at the end of Freeman Road, .6 mile west of its juncture with the Huntersville-Denmark Road about 1.2 miles south of Huntersville, Tennessee. Sometimes called the Crittenden Cemetery (for a later family) but it is more aptly called by the name of the owners of the old plantation in this locale, once the property of the family of James Meriwether (1788-1852), a native Georgian who with his family settled in old Civil District Five of Madison County.

 

            On the south side of this cemetery, just south of the grave of Henrietta Meriwether (1807-1834) is the tombstone bearing an inscription:

In Memory of
SUCKEY CHARD
Died March 1842
Aged 75 Years

A footstone is in place bearing the initials "S. C."

            Presumably her given name was that usually spelled Sukey or Sookey; besides being a name in its own right it was also an old-time nickname for Susanna. She may have been a fond servant, a member of the James Meriwether household or of a related family. If so, she probably came with them to Tennessee from Georgia.

            None of the Meriwether men have a female in their own households or among their slaves, of Suckey Chard's age in the U.S.Census of 1840, Madison County. None of the estate settlements or land transactions recorded in Madison County seem to cast any light on the identity of this lady.

            Photograph of tombstone taken by Jonathan Smith, July 9, 1995

 

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