The old
Muscogee Cemetery was once an important part of a thriving town.
The town
is now gone (see Muscogee story), and the cemeteryy except for one small
section on the east side, has fallen into disrepair.
Southern
States Lumber Company operated the mill town from 1889 through the late 192Os,
and many graves reflect the families of those employees.
Prior to
that, however, as early as the 1860s, families settled in Muscogee.
Many men
worked for Southern States' predecessor, Muscogee Lumber Company.
Though
published records indicate burials as early as the late 1880s, family
researchers conclude that gravesites marked only with mounds of iron rocks, a
native stone, date to the early 1870s.
Impressive
monuments once stood surrounded by decorative iron fencing, but neglect and serious
vandalism beginning in the 1980s have left little of those memorials. It vas
said by local residents that many headstones, once broken, were thrown into the
adjacent Perfidy River.
The
cemetery was surveyed and published in Rural Cemeteries in Escambia County,
Florida 1826-1950, the earliest known record of Muscogee's burials. Surnames include Richbourg, Nellums, Taylor,
Nelson, Cooper, Mudge: Henderson, Mullins, Hardy, Vaughn, and Merritt.
To
locate the cemetery from U.S. Highway 29 in Cantonment, drive west on County
Road 184/Muscogee Road 4.7 mites to River Annex Road (junction of County Road
99). Turn right. Drive .7 of a mile (just beyond the railroad tracks) to the
unmarked clay/dirt cemetery entrance on the left. Several hundred yards beyond
is the cemetery (cannot be seen from River Annex Road).
Submitted
by Judith Richbourg Jolly, Pensacola, FL
April
2000 (The Heritage of Escambia County, Florida)