Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 29, 1990 TAG: 9004270010
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY BUSINESS EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
So are veterans of six wars and many of the pioneer residents of the Roanoke Valley - 18,200 people in all, buried in Fair View Cemetery over the last century.
There are about 18,000 lots remaining in the 60-acre burial ground, said Dennis Cronk, president of the non-profit company that owns the cemetery and the person in charge of preparing for the commemoration of its centennial.
The green hill stretching from Salem Turnpike to Melrose Avenue in Northwest Roanoke was Roanoke County farmland when a group of people organized the Fair View Cemetery Co. there in 1890.
Only East Hill in Salem and the City Cemetery on Tazewell Avenue are older among the large cemeteries in the Roanoke Valley.
Few cemeteries operate for 100 years without coming under municipal ownership, Cronk said.
His list of 1890 stockholders of the company contains such prominent families as the Moomaws, McClanahans, Fishburns, Oakeys, Trouts, Woodrums, Englebys and Marstellers.
Descendants of about 20 early families are still paying into a perpetual-care fund for the cemetery. After 1918, the company required that a part of the payment for all lots be placed in the fund for maintenance of the property.
In 1983, the company was converted to a non-profit corporation, which also owns Cedar Lawn Cemetery on Cove Road in Roanoke County.
Tax-deductible contributions are received through a foundation, apparently one of the first for a cemetery in the nation, according to Cronk.
Mowing grass and general upkeep are expensive, he said. Income from the care fund pays only one-fourth of total costs so expenses must be offset by lot sales.
The cemetery has almost 130 burials a year and Cronk's goal is to bring annual sales up to that level.
Lots sometimes are used by the fifth generation of the original purchasers.
Many families have unused gravesites in their lots but Fair View rules prohibit their sale to others. Cronk said it is too difficult to obtain permission from all heirs of the original purchasers.
Cronk, also a real-estate agent, has been cramming on early history of the cemetery and the community in preparation for an observance of the cemetery's 100th birthday on May 28, Memorial Day.
Cronk has prepared a guide for a walking tour to the graves of Watts, state delegate and senator and unsuccessful candidate for governor, and Tayloe, squire of Buena Vista in Southeast Roanoke, as well as the burial plots of the mayors and other prominent early Roanokers.
Talks by Sixth District Rep. James Olin, Del. Clifton Woodrum and Mayor Noel Taylor, a Civil War re-enactment, dramatic performances and other events are on the schedule for the noontime program.
For the centennial observance, Cronk sent a survey to the 2,300 lot owners, asking their priorities for improvements to the cemetery.
The lot owners suggested repair of monuments, driveways, fences, replacing the 1893 water system and landscaping and these improvements were packaged into a $300,000 fund-raising campaign. More than one-third of that amount has been raised.
A 40-foot flagpole is being installed near the Melrose entrance, roads have been repaved, 100 trees and 4,000 flower bulbs have been planted and other landscaping done in a major renovation project. White birches have been a mark of Fair View for years.
An honor guard will recognize the 1,000 military veterans buried there. They started with 216 Confederate and two Union soldiers.
The 10 mayors are Samuel Griggs and William Startzman of Big Lick, and Samuel G. Williams, William Carr, Henry S. Trout, Sturgis E. Jones, Robert A. Buckner, John W. Woods, Sydney F. Small and Roy L. Webber of Roanoke.
Horse-drawn hearses and mourners in buggies came to burials in the early days. Rules warned visitors against leaving horses unattended. Loud and profane conversation was prohibited.
George Martin, one of the five keepers of the grounds, has been a part of Fair View for more than two-thirds of its century.
Martin, now 81, tended horses at the cemetery when he was 9. Bruce Griggs, an early owner of the cemetery, assigned Martin the task of feeding the horses before they raced at the old fairgrounds, now Victory Stadium.
As he grew up, Martin's chores expanded to mowing grass and trimming shrubbery. He dug graves until that job was mechanized with a backhoe about 30 years ago.
Martin knows how to lay gravestones "better than anybody else," Cronk said.
Distinctive stones mark the Woodrum and Ellis family plots and a granite model of an old Norfolk and Western Railway Class C steam engine rests on the stone of T.W. Goodman, an engineer who died 60 years ago. The engine, carved by H.E. "Nick" Nichols of Roanoke, once was the subject of a Life magazine article.
Two smaller cemeteries, St. Andrew's Catholic and C C. Williams Burial Park, are just west of Fair View, off Salem Turnpike.
by CNB