Community Memorial Gardens is located in Stem. It is really two cemeteries in one. Both cemeteries are laid out in neat rows with lanes running the length of the cemetery. I often drive through this cemetery, as I have quite a few kin who are buried there. One of these is my great-great-great-great grandfather, who fought in the Revolutionary War. John Bowling passed away in 1817. Nearby Bowling’s Mountain is named for John Bowling. Bowling’s Mountain is just west of Stem and was once known for its mineral deposits, especially pyrophyllite. There was a Bowling’s Mountain Mine which extracted the mineral.
When the Army built Camp Butner, many families were forced to relocate. Family burial grounds and church cemeteries were left behind and some desecrated. Some were moved. The government contracted with the Sidney Haigh Company of Jefferson County, Indiana, to buy land north of Stem in Tally Ho away from Camp Butner to build a new cemetery. The Haigh Company bought 36 acres from my granddaddy, O.L. Bowling Sr. and his wife Ellie Bowling. The Bowlings received $3,900 for this land. The deed was dated September 4, 1942, and the deed stated that the land would be used “as the cemetery in which bodies now located in the Camp Butner area may be re-interred.”
According to a final report, 1,638 bodies were dis-interred, transported, and re-buried at a cost of $34 per body. Each body was transported in a box of pine wood to which was attached a heavy cardboard marker recording information about the deceased. Stone markers were dismantled and reset at the new graves. Some of the dis-interred bodies were reburied at church cemeteries and private cemeteries close to Camp Butner. But of the 1,638 dis-interred bodies, 1,208 were unnamed, and therefore have no markers to this day. That is why it looks like there are many open spaces as you drive or walk through the present day Community Memorial Gardens…