Old Cemetery Found

I was searching through Newspapers.com for information on my Ott family in Louisiana & Mississippi. I found this story about a search for the lost Ott family cemetery. I searched for the names in the newspaper article on Find A Grave but did not find them. Maybe you know some of the folks found in the cemetery. It was disappointing that my Otts were not found but maybe these names will help someone else.

Old Cemetery Found

Last Aug. 23 we mentioned finding a lost Pike County cemetery site close to the Louisiana line. This brought up questions about a lost Ott burial site and another cemetery hunt was made a few weeks ago in the same area.

Paul Ott Carruth of Dixie Springs, Margaret McNeese and Walter Wesley Ott of Osyka and ourselves [Kathryn Cole and Paul Mogan] found nothing that trip. Happily word of a possible site near the place the second search was made got down to some of us, and a third expedition was launched on Jan. 27, this time with some success.

An abandoned cemetery was found just south of Osyka on the Louisiana side. It is near the Old German Cemetery in a field about 200 yards from Highway 51. There are markers and a list follows. Some of the markers were badly broken and had to be fitted together like jigsaw puzzle pieces to be read and some had to be dug up. There is a good possibility that some Ott family members are buried here, though no Ott marker was found.

Ruth Ott Wallis wrote n her Ott family history, published several years ago, that Jacob Jackson Ott, an ancestor of many of this area’s citizens, was born in 1817 in Mount Hermon, La., and died in 1869, and was buried in Osyka “in a cemetery which has long been abandoned.” His grave was one of the objects of the search. The cemetery just discovered, however, has been in use at least as late as 1964.

Buried here were:

Thorton Bender, died 1905, age 78

Thorton Bender, died 1895, age 29

Charles W. Bender, died 1932, age 74

Willie Brown, died 1905, age 27

Florence Brown, wife of Sam, age 24

Dollie Brown, wife of Doublin, died 1898

Celia Cutrer, wife of James, died 1882

Alvin Johnson, 1900-1902

Thomas E. Johnson, 1911-1964, served in Infantry, World War II

Dolly Penilton, wife of A., 1868-1907

Ulysses C., son of A. D. Penilton, 1900-1907

Children of R. and H. Smith

        Laura, with no dates, and Louis, age 13

Clara Winners, 1904-1911

A marker with too many pieces missing to be fully read was (Jos)ephine, (daug)hter of –iah & --

Checking area marriage records, we found four listings for the name Andrew Johnson. One or more Anderew Johnsons married Matilda Monroe in 1882, Annie Petra Everson in 1882, Nellie Bender in 1885, and MIlly Selby in 1900, all Pike County. Also a Doublin Brown married Dolly Gaitlin in 1896. No pertinent marriages were found in Louisiana lists, but the Johnson dates would fit the inscription on Andrew’s marker, and the names and dates for Dollie Brown fit perfectly. 

We heard that some of the markers originally in this cemetery were pushed aside down to a nearby creek bed. Does anyone have information on this cemetery, just south of Osyka in Louisiana, please get in touch. Was it a church cemetery or a private cemetery? Were some or all of these burials that are listed added to a pre-existing older cemetery that might be the one sought for Jacob Jackson Ott? We would appreciate even a clue as to the identity of the cemetery.

If any of the listed persons are related to you and you would like to visit the cemetery, call us and we will tell you how to find it and how to go about getting permission to go on the land.

Connecting Lines, Route 2, Box 230, Osyka, Miss. 39657; 601-542-5013

Source: Cole, Kathryn and Paul Mogan, Old Cemetery Found. (McComb, MS: Enterprise-Journal, 7 Feb 1982) 14; digital image, Newspapers.com: accessed February 2019.