Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 17, 1994 TAG: 9407170040
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
What they unearthed was a 35-year-old secret buried beneath a suburban front lawn in Bedford County.
In their quest to discover a family graveyard, the Poindexters discovered that it, like some other rural cemeteries, had been destroyed by developers.
Now the Poindexters are demanding access to the cemetery from the homeowners whose property surrounds it.
"People don't care about the John Does of a hundred years ago, but if it was their own family, they would care," said Bob Poindexter.
Annie Poindexter said developers are destroying cemeteries "all over Bedford County, and it is so unfair . . . You just don't destroy a cemetery. I was raised in the country. I have values, and values mean you don't destroy what other people put up."
The Poindexters trace their family tree in Virginia to the 1600s. They point proudly to copies of land agreements that were signed by Thomas Jefferson and Bob Poindexter's great-great-great-uncle, Samuel Poindexter.
The Lynchburg couple's ancestors owned several stately plantations in Bedford County. One of those was Locust Grove, a 100-acre-plus farm of rolling green fields that surrounded a beautiful white-columned Southern plantation house.
Samuel Poindexter's son, William Dabney Poindexter, a U.S. Army captain and distant cousin to Bob Poindexter, lived at Locust Grove and died there in 1847.
Checking deeds to Locust Grove at the Bedford County Courthouse, the couple learned that William Dabney Poindexter's heirs sold the plantation in 1869.
A clause in that deed mentioned a quarter-acre cemetery where William Dabney Poindexter and his family were buried. The deed gave Poindexter's heirs "free access and entrance" to the cemetery.
Excited at the prospect of finding their distant cousin's grave, Bob and Annie Poindexter went to Claymont subdivision.
Located on Claymont Drive off U.S. 221 in the Forest area, the subdivision was created in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when half of Locust Grove plantation was sold and subdivided into 12 lots.
The neighborhood is now a quiet upper-middle-class community of eight one-story houses that are mostly owned by people of retirement age.
The Poindexters said Claymont residents told them they had never heard of a cemetery in the area.
Undaunted, they went to the other half of the former plantation, Locust Grove Farm. Adjacent to Claymont on U.S. 221, the farm includes the original plantation house.
It was there that the Poindexters met Helen Kitchen, who was born in the Locust Grove plantation house Jan 31, 1920. She told the Poindexters that she remembered the cemetery from when she was a little girl.
And she said it stood right in the middle of what is now the Claymont subdivision.
Kitchen lived at Locust Grove until 1936, when her father died and her mother sold the plantation. She moved north to Michigan, where she lived until 1977. Then she returned to Virginia and bought Locust Grove Farm, her birthplace.
"I know every shop-made nail in this home," Kitchen said, affectionately patting the walls of the house that she has spent the last 20 years restoring.
Looking out her kitchen window, she pointed to where the cemetery stood. "It had beautiful wrought-iron gates and a cement wall," she said.
As a girl, she said, "I would pick buttercups and put them through the gate" on tombstones. "I was going to take care of these people that built my home," referring to the Poindexters who are buried there.
She remembers the cemetery having at least three or four vertical stones with ornate decorations and clearly legible names.
When Kitchen returned to Virginia in the 1970s and asked old friends what happened to the cemetery, she said they told her it was bulldozed over because the developers could not sell the land with a cemetery.
Speaking of Claymont residents, she said, "There's a lot of people that . . . say `you crazy thing' when I tell people there was a cemetery here.
"Somebody can call me a fool if they want to . . . They still are lying, they still are covering . . . up" that a cemetery is in Claymont.
Armed with Kitchen's memories, the Poindexters went back to the Bedford County Courthouse, where they learned that mention of the cemetery disappeared from deeds to the plantation in the middle of this century.
When Claymont was created by developers Frank Brown and Norris Holt in 1959, the deed for one of the 12 original lots said buyers of that lot were subject to any restrictions apparent from viewing the property or inspecting the subdivision's plat, or survey map, on file at the county courthouse.
On the plat, the Poindexters found a cemetery plainly labeled on the lot.
That lot was one of three that now make up a large corner lot at 103 Claymont Drive. Looking at the property today, one sees only a large grassy yard with a small ranch house and a few trees.
The owners, Charles Edward Poss and Virginia Poss, bought it from another homeowner in the late 1960s. Bob Poindexter went to the Posses to ask about the cemetery. They denied knowing anything about it.
Then the Poindexters consulted the surveyor who drew the map of the subdivision. He told them that he recalled seeing a few graves. Measuring from his original map, he told the Poindexters where the cemetery should be.
Bob and Annie Poindexter returned to the Posses' home with a measuring tape.
Walking across the Posses' front yard, they looked down in the grass and, Bob Poindexter said, "We saw a stone. My wife brushed it off and read the name Elizabeth Watts Poindexter - William Dabney's wife.
"That's what we were looking for."
On a later trip, the couple found William Dabney Poindexter's gravestone lying on its side under the grass beside his wife's gravestone.
Much to the Posses' dismay, the Poindexters told them they intended to exercise their rights of access as descendants. The Poindexters also said they wanted to put up a marker showing where the graves were.
"We do have a right to go to the cemetery," Bob Poindexter said. "I don't know what the lawyers or real estate people told . . . [the Posses], but they did not buy the cemetery," only the property surrounding it.
The fact that the cemetery was destroyed, he said, "should not destroy my rights to go that cemetery. You do not buy a cemetery. It's like trying to buy the Brooklyn Bridge. It's not for sale, but it's been sold several times, I understand."
The Posses tell a different story.
They said the Poindexters' forays into their yard have been an unwanted - and illegal - intrusion.
"Mr. and Mrs. Poindexter . . . walked in just like it was their property," Virginia Poss said. "We don't know what exactly to think. It sounds like they're trying to take over the place."
Poss said she called the Bedford County Sheriff's Office to make a complaint of trespassing against the Poindexters, but was told it was a civil matter and would have to be taken to court.
Neither side wants that, so they are at an uneasy stalemate. The Poindexters say they don't have the money to hire a lawyer, and the Posses say they are too old and sick to fight.
The Posses say they don't see the need to mark graves in their front yard.
"We were told it was an abandoned cemetery," Virginia Poss said. "From what I understand, . . . it was terrible-looking, just neglected."
The developers say the same.
Frank Brown died last year, but his widow, Frances Brown, said the Poindexter cemetery in 1959 "was the worst thing you ever saw. The stones were knocked over. Trees were growing in it."
Norris Holt, the other Claymont developer, is now retired from the U.S. Department of Labor and lives in Richmond.
He said someone at the Bedford County Courthouse whose name and position he cannot recall told him and Frank Brown in 1959 that they should place an advertisement in the weekly newspaper to seek out relatives of the Poindexters. He said he did this and got a response from family members who said they didn't care about the cemetery.
Holt said that same person at the courthouse then gave him and Brown permission to remove the gravestones.
"They told us to lay the stones down on the graves but not to build over" the cemetery. "It was two to four stones that had writing on them, that's all we could find." Holt and Brown put sod over the stones and planted grass seed.
Since the 1940s, Virginia law has required developers or homeowners who wish to remove a cemetery from their property to notify the family of the deceased and give the family an opportunity to move the graves or block the action.
If the family cannot be located, the developer must file a bill of equity with the local circuit court and then move the bodies and the tombstones to another cemetery.
There is no record of such a filing by Holt or Brown at the Bedford County Courthouse. Nevertheless, Holt said he believes he was given rightful permission to grass over the tombstones.
Frances Brown said, "I don't know why . . . [the Poindexters] are so excited about it. If nobody ever came to visit [the cemetery] in all that time, I don't know why they should be excited now."
Bob Poindexter said, "What difference does it make how old it is? I hope when I'm dead and gone, they don't say, `He's been there 100 years,' and bulldoze me."
At the recent annual meeting of the Poindexter Descendants Association in Nashville, Bob and Annie Poindexter met Dr. James S. Poindexter III, the great-great-grandson of William Dabney Poindexter and Elizabeth Watts Poindexter.
James Poindexter, who lives in Richmond, said, "We had no idea where William Dabney was buried until Bob did his detective work. He certainly did us a favor."
But he added, "It's kind of hard for me to imagine that 85-year-old ladies would be involved in a cover-up [of the cemetery]. They probably just don't want the traffic [it would create] in their neighborhood."
James Poindexter said he hoped to negotiate with the Posses to place a memorial on his great-great-grandparents' graves.
As for Bob Poindexter, he says he's not through fighting for descendants' rights.
"I had no idea people were going around destroying family cemeteries, and I just want to put a stop to it," he said.
"I want to make sure people who want to go to their family cemeteries are not stopped."
by CNB