Historic Henryville Cemetery being brought back to life
Like so many of the young people in Nicholas County, Ray Compton moved away after high school.
He had grown up in Carlisle and was the first black student to attend the elementary school here.
He joined the National Guard in 1976 to get his education and ended up serving in Germany and other places.
After Compton’s parents died when he was 12, his aunt across the street, and neighbors helped watch out for him and his older brother.
His parents and those relatives and friends were all buried at Henryville Cemetery, which is why taking care of it means so much to him.
When Ray came back to Carlisle to visit and attend a High School football game, he decided to take the postal exam and ended up getting a job with the postal service that allowed him to stay in the area.
He rented in Paris and owned property in Carlisle so the move back made sense.
Compton had watched the Henryville Cemetery and its 639 grave sites get overgrown with neglect. Reverend Ernie Carmicle who served from 2003 – 2008 at the Carlisle United Methodist did a lot of research about the Henryville Cemetery, grave sites and people buried there.
One day Compton was visiting the cemetery and met Reverend Carmicle and they struck up a conversation.
Out of that conversation, Ray and friends decided to join the cemetery board in 2004 to work with Rev Carmicle to bring the cemetery back.
Today Compton serves as President, Marion Johnson is secretary, Ben Sharp treasurer, and Shamara Bean Vice President.
As Rev Carmicle relates in his research, in the Spring of 2004 he was driving by the cemetery and “it struck me that the weeded area was actually a graveyard.
I had known where a cemetery in the area was, but didn’t know for sure where it was.
I pulled over and walked in the graveyard up an incline to a grave that had recently been cleaned up. I saw graves back to the 1830’s.
I began asking questions and found out that at one point Henryville was a good size town with over 300 people.
Over the years people had died and others had moved away until there were few people left to keep the cemetery cleared.
I felt a calling to help and talked to others who got involved and we would go on Saturdays to work on clearing debris until we had cleared to the top of the hill”.
After that Ben and Judy Sharp began mowing.
Soon after that a group was formed to begin a Cemetery Board.
Bobby Crockett offered the Cemetery board the plot of land directly next to the original grave lot which they accepted and began caring for.
To date 36 grave stones that had fallen over have been re-set with new poured foundations.
The board has done yard sales and other fund raisers and raised money for a riding lawn mower and a commercial weed eater.
Since retiring in 2013, Ray puts in about three hours a day clearing more brush, mowing or restoring grave sites.
Local Funeral Director Brent Gaunce has been a big supporter and shared his expertise on how to glue broken grave stones back together and level them so they can be resurrected.
He also helps with burials at the newer section of the Henryville Cemetery today.
Efforts are underway to get plots laid out in the new area. (11) graves are there so far, all neatly lined up.
The rest of the land needs to be surveyed and 4 x 10 plots marked off.
About 350 or so plots are available in the three acre lot that runs over to Spring Valley Road.
The group plans to continue fund raising to eventually add a chapel and parking lot to the site.
They also have another 30 – 50 feet deep area past the top of the hill to clear that is overgrown.
They hope that more former Nicholas County residents will come back to visit family grave sites and perhaps come back to Carlisle to live.
They could use donations of top soil, and bobcat services to help clearing more overgrown areas yet to be reclaimed, and to help with resetting grave markers that have fallen over.
The CME Church had its homecoming the last weekend in September to celebrate Old Land Mark Days.
There was a lot of excitement this year about the work done at the cemetery and a number of folks donated money to help with the efforts.
The Cemetery holds a lot of history for Nicholas County.
There are slaves buried there who died in the 1880’s, and 16 Civil War Veterans along with veterans from WWI, WWI, the Korean war and Vietnam.
According to records, the youngest soldier to enlist in the civil war was from Carlisle and is buried at the Henryville Cemetery.
Talbert Boyd was born in 1850 and joined the Army in 1864 at the age of 14.
He served in the 100th US Colored Infantry; a unit that fought in the Battle of Nashville in 1865. The oldest man buried in the cemetery is George Wesley but in 1828, died 1935.
The oldest woman was Dicey Wilson born in 1807, died 1920.
The oldest Civil War soldier was Levi Riggs, born 1818, died 1920.
Several people died and were buried after influenza epidemics in 1904 and 1920.
The group has begun documenting the cemetery and graves with a three-ring binder on display through Thanksgiving at the Neal Welcome Center Veterans Display.
Another copy of the binder is available at the Carlisle-Nicholas County Library and it’s also online if you Google Henryville Cemetery, and they are working on a Facebook page.
Anyone wanting to donate time or funds can call or text Ray Compton at 859-749-4968 or Ben Sharp at 859-967-4930.
