(Much of the information presented here was gathered from hand-written documents maintained by members of Bethel. Mac McElvar was responsible for this for many years and created the location charts that are part of this collection. Don Singletary, as chairman of the trustees, has maintained these records in recent years. The gathering of information in this presentation was done in the 2010's...and this site represents the status of that effort thru 2014.)

Bethel's Cemetery dates back to the time of the first church building on the site. The land was deeded to Bethel in 1847. Although the earliest date of death on any monument is Aug 20, 1877 for Florence L. Crowder, the 3-year-old daughter of A.H. & M.A. Crowder.The 1826 birth year of Elizabeth Barineau is the earliest date on any monument. The cemetery was used as a "pauper's burial ground" at one time and as late as the 1970's there were unscribed wooden markers on several graves.

A member of Bethel, Mac McElvar, created some charts of burial places in the 1970's. He used the memory of an elder member of Bethel, Annie Ruth Hartsfield, to fill in some details. Note the areas that are said to contain "many unmarked graves". Copies of those charts and some other documents are provided below, including pages from a booklet, "Cemeteries of Leon County", prepared for the nation's Bicentennial in 1976 by Joy Smith Paisley. Pages 19-24 contain monument inscriptions from Bethel's Cemetery.

Click on the underlined/hilited text to open each item. The scanned images of the charts and hand-written documents were made by Kathie Adams in 2013.

Cemeteries of Leon County - This shows the 5 pages of the full document relating to Bethel's Cemetery.
Church Cemetery Records - This includes a collection of 7 hand-written notes recording purchases of cemetery plots. They contain entries from 1976-2013.
Section Plot Locater - This is a collection of hand-written notes for the assignment/use of all burial plots, by section and plot.
Cemetery Plot Layout - This page provides access to copies of the hand-drawn charts showing the location of sections and plots in Bethel's cemetery.
Cemetery Record Index - This is an Excel spreadsheet that summarizes the information in the hand-written records in various ways. Below are listed several reports printed from this spreadsheet.

Cemetery Record Summary - This is a one page summary of the information in the 7 pages of hand-written cemetery purchase records. It is printed from the "Cemetery Records" worksheet in the Excel spreadsheet. The "Cem Rcd Pg" and "Seq" columns document the Page and "Line number" of the hand-written document from which the information was taken.

Plot Locater Index - This is a 3 page summary of the information in the 15+ pages of the hand-written "Section Plot Locater" document. It was printed from the "Plot Locater" worksheet in the Excel spreadsheet.The "Page" column indicates the page of the hand-written document where the information on that line can be found. Notice, in some cases information was found on more than one page. The "I/C" column indicates that the plot is for an Infant or Child. The "OCC" column indicates whether the plot is known to be OCCupied or, "?", is questionable. The first column is a "Line Number" column which shows that there are 241 entries for burial plots.

Barineau Family Plot Index - This is a 1 page summary of the plots in the Barineau family section of the cemetery (within Section 2, plots A-1 thru A-31). It was printed from the "Barineau Family Plot" worksheet of the Excel spreadsheet which was created from the chart for the "Barineau Family Plot" in the "Cemetery Plot Layout".

Plot Locater Notes - This report shows additional columns in the "Plot Locater" worksheet of the spreadsheet. These include a "Surname" column which has the last name from the "Name" column or the "Maiden Name" if it can be determined from the "Name" field. The "Birth Year" and "Death Year" columns are taken from the "Born" and "Died" values and the "Age" is computed from the "Birth Year" and "Death Year". The burial plot identification columns are omitted here to shorten the length of the line, but the "Seq" number is the same as that in the "Plot Locater Index" report.

Report 1 - This is a report from the "Plot Locater" information that sorts the information first by "I/C" then by "Occ" and finally by Surname. The "Seq" field is the line number for the entry in the "Plot Locater Index" report. The first column is a "Line Number" for this report. It shows that there are 36 plots for infants or children. Another 135 plots are "Occupied" and 24 more that "may be" occupied. Another 26 have been "reserved" and there are 20 that have not been "spoken for".

Report 2 - This Report is sorted by "Surname" and then by the "Born" date. It could be useful for finding all plots related to a "family" that might be scattered about the cemetery.

Report 3 - This Report is sorted in ascending order by "Death Year". It shows the "activity" of burials through the years. Notice the frequency of Infant/Child burials in the earlier years.

Perhaps it should be mentioned that there has not (yet) been a comparison of the plot purchases in the "Cemetery Records" to the information in the "Plot Locater" worksheet to see if all "reserved" plots have been properly assigned. I do notice that Curtis Church had 8 plots "reserved" for him, although the "Plot Locater" (see "Report 2") only has 4 spaces associated with the Surname of "Church".