If you got half a post recently I apologize, I hit the wrong button when I was creating the draft. Oops!
In 1999 a family cemetery was moved from Brooks County Georgia to their final resting place in McMullen Cemetery in Pinellas County. James McMullen was a Revolutionary War soldier and he and his family helped settle the county in the mid-1800’s, and ultimately came to rest in this small but charmingly beautiful cemetery.
I was lucky enough to be in Tampa for 2 weeks and went out one night after a light rain, restless from being in the hotel for a week with just my coworkers for company. It’s an odd feeling to be on a business trip for that long. For two weeks I still woke up most nights looking at the foot of the bed for my cat, Louise, and came back every day expecting to have to do some kind of chore or task.
But there wasn’t one. For two weeks I watched bad TV at night and ate more restaurant food than I ever have in my entire life. So naturally after a couple of days of this I needed to go walk in a cemetery and get some fresh air that didn’t smell like the Hilton.
McMullen Cemetery is right off the road, and it has a neat layout where you pretty much just drive straight through in a curve that takes you past the whole thing. It isn’t very big, only 274 burials. You can see all of it in one trip. On the site is a small shed that looks almost like a little chapel with a cross on the door, and it sits near the burials of the original family. The headstones in that section are very old and delicately stamped with the names and dates, many of which were hard for me to read in the waning light. The style is one seen all over Central Florida cemeteries, though, and the stones are artistic and beautiful.
The cemetery is shaded by fine old oaks and has a carpet of very thick grass and ground cover, so it was a little sylvan glade right there in the middle of Clearwater. What struck me the most as I walked though was the high number of children’s burials. The dates don’t correspond with the Spanish flu (maybe one or two of them do) or even Yellow Fever, like the cemetery in Enterprise Florida that is loaded with victims from the epidemic. It hit the Tampa area in 1883, 1887, 1888, and 1905 according to one old document I found, so it’s hard to say what was going on that caused so many children’s deaths. I always feel sad seeing patterns like that in cemeteries, but some of them are just that way.
This cemetery is active and easy to find. It is impeccably maintained (and I don’t give that compliment out to everyone), with bright new flowers on almost all of the graves and well mowed grass. I don’t think I saw a single broken headstone.
A couple of other features- toward the front of the cemetery there are several odd burials that have ledger stones along with uprights, but on top of the ledgers are urns that are sealed with copper that appear to actually contain cremated remains. They are unique and the first ones that I’ve seen like that.
At the back of the property near the fence is a beautiful plot with a HUGE rosemary bush planted between two headstones. Rosemary was traditionally planted as a symbol of remembrance, and I love that. It’s something I rarely see on graves so I thought it was wonderful to see.
