For The Tuscumbian
By Mary Carton
The old church sits west of the Spring Valley Depot slowly decaying. Offers by volunteers to stabilize the structure have been refused by the two sisters living out of state. Its backbone and floor joists have cracked.
The cornerstone says Kirks Chapel CME Church, rebuilt AD 1942, I or L Kennedy Pastor, R W Woodard and another name buried in the soil. A look in one of the windows is one of a church ready for Sunday service. The pews and pulpit and books? What records are inside the little crumbling church? The building is much older, but how old? My Great Grandfather Louis Gusmus taught there. He died in 1932.
Behind the church neglected and overgrown is a little cemetery. If I was a snake, this would be an ideal place for me, especially under one of the broken slabs. As Tom McKnight and I walk carefully around, a light rain starts falling. He says the spirits are happy we are here. I later find out that the last time Tom visited, he was attacked by swarms of yellow jackets.
The name of the cemetery is not yet known nor is the name of the church when it was first built. Hopefully those reading this can provide some insight into our quest. Photos taken August 2013.
EDITORS NOTE 1-12-2014. The cemetery is listed as Kirk’s Chapel on the old county maps and as Spring Valley Station Cemetery on Find a Grave. It is not yet known when the church was built nor the name of the church at that time.
The Tuscumbian 
I can not believe the history of the area that is in ruins. So many families. Surely lots of people will come forward with knowledge of these people. Thanks for the pictures. I enjoyed them.
Steve McAnally iPad
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You’re welcome Steve. The owners live out of state, no connection to the area, so they don’t care, even though offers were made to save it. Thanks for visiting.
Those are beautiful photos, Mary. I love old cemeteries. Hopefully a way will be found to do the work needed. Things like this deserve care.
thanks Kathy, it really does.
Thank you so much for your beautiful photos, Mary. It’s really sad to see this wonderful old church and cemetery in such a state of ruin. Once they’re gone, these treasures can never be replaced.
Hello Mary Carton – I was perusing the grave marker photo requests for the Tuscumbia area online on FindAGrave.com and there are a dozen or so requests for Kirk’s Chapel Cemetery. I’m sure some of your photos would be the right ones to fill some of those requests. Would you like to post the photos that you took that match the requests? If not, would you mind if I filled the matching requests with your photos? (I would give you credit.) If not, no problem, I can go to Spring Valley and take my own photos. I have taken over 1,100 grave marker photos in over 200 northwest Alabama cemeteries to fill member requests from all over the country. But I’ve slowed down a lot due to bad knees and I really miss getting out there. Happy New Year to you!!!
If you would like to match the requests and give credit that would be great. I was getting the requests for the Tuscumbia area and I’ve stopped getting the e-mails from them for reason. The cemetery is very overgrown, full of yellow jackets and probably snakes. I’ve had a knee replacement and need it again and the other, and this is a rough cemetery to get around. Please feel free to use my photos and I’ll check on why I’m no longer getting requests. I’ve been trying to get permission to trespass to do a couple of the requests.
Thank you, Mary. I have 12 of your photos matched to FindAGrave requests and will get them posted there this weekend. I will put a caption that gives you full credit on each photo. I have emailed FindAGrave and asked to have my photo-request-emails reactivated – if it works I’ll tell you how I did it. Happy New Year!!!
thank you very much, been working late a lot last several weeks and it’s hard getting things done.
Good Morning Mary,
I am up earlier than usual today and here is a sample of your photo posted on Find A Grave. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=129237542 I see this is not automatically becoming a hyperlink that you can just click on – I’ll try to make it one if I can, otherwise you will have to do a drag and drop. I try never to assume how much others know about computer work and for all I know you are light years ahead of me. If this is in any way not satisfactory to you please let me know. Happy New Year!!!
It did work, thank you very much. I just hate what is happening to the church. The Colbert Landmarks offered to stabilize the church and the owners in Indiana refused to let it be done. I fear the church and cemetery will be bought if not already by a tar sands company as they have surrounding property. There are laws on the books against cemetery destruction, but it happens all the time.
Mary – Here is the latest email from Find-A-Grave regarding photo requests. I do not believe this information. If they contact ten (10) local members with photo requests, which come in almost daily, they would have to have thousands of local volunteers because I have not received an email in 3 or 4 years. Like most businesses and organizations they seem to have outgrown their level of competence.
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Discussion Thread
Response Via Email (Jessica) 05/01/2015 11:28 AM
Hello Richard,
Thank you for contacting Find A Grave in regards to receiving photo requests.
When a photo is requested we send out an email to ten photo volunteers in the zip code area where the grave is located to invite them to claim the photo request.
There are many members on Findagrave and these emails are sent out to 10 random people within that area. In the future, we hope to extend this to more volunteers. There has also been an issue of some providers catching the photo notification emails as spam before they reach the recipient’s inbox. We have been notifying providers and hope to have this issue resolved soon.
If you are not receiving photo notification emails, go into your contributor tools and check the zip code for photo requests. You can claim and fulfill from that page. You can also check specific cemetery pages as photo requests are listed there also. If you click on the photo requests on the cemetery page, you will be brought to the claim/fulfill page.
If you need additional assistance, please feel free to reply to this message.
Sincerely,
Jessica
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Thanks, I’m still not receiving requests, even though I went back on line and re-registered.
My GGG-Grandparents James M. Fulps 1845-1897 and Nancy I. Jones Fulps 1845-1896, are interned in a plot with only JMF on a stone; my GG-Grandparents W.C. ‘Billy’ Grisham 1865-1947 and Suzan V. Fulps Grisham 1871-1921, with marked grave stones; and other family members are interned in the SVCMC Cemetery near Spring Valley Station. I assumed that SVCMC is for Spring Valley Community Methodist Church. The entire family were Methodist. James Fulps was a Civil War Veteran and several other Veterans grave markers are there so I contacted several organizations to suggest that they get the Boy Scouts to restore the cemetery. Guess nothing was done. Getting up in age and reside in Virginia or I would do it myself.
It is extremely overgrown. The church is caving in. The Landmarks Foundation offered to stabilize it, but the 2 sisters in Indiana won’t allow it.
My ex and I visited around 2013/14. We loved stuff like this.. And some guy who lived in the house next door threatened us, swore a graveyard was not back there and threatened to handcuff us. He even had a fake badge. When we offered to show him the cemetery he told us if we didn’t leave it’d get ‘bad’.
He said if we wouldn’t leave, he would force us too. That his family had owned the land for hundreds of years. Be wary of you go visit. My ex’s family has ancestors buried there, and he didn’t like hearing that either. He walked up on us pulling weeds and cleaning the graves off.
To this day, I’m scared to go back and visit. The man was very angry and continued with the threats as we were getting in the car leaving.
We had talked to him before going that day. I didn’t know there was a cemetery there until that day. You have to allow access to a cemetery.
My great grandmother had a brother that was buried there I’m unsure of the name
I have an Aunt that is buried there, she died shortly after being born. On our list of family names, she is listed as Baby Girl McDonald. She was born and died on February 19,1932. She does not have a marker only a rock.
I can remember going to the cemetery with Aunt Kathleen McDonald Shelton to clean off the grave. I was only there that one time and Aunt Kathleen passed away March 24,1985, so there is no one living that knows where the grave is.
The cemetery is in sad shape. I tried to get pictures of most of the headstones. The cemetery is listed as two different cemeteries on Find a Grave site.