Red Ridge
A local cemetery shares its stories STORY & PHOTOS BY BETSY ILER
E.
J. Moore’s children bid him a heartfelt farewell when he died in 1880, engraving upon his marker in the Red Ridge United Methodist Church Cemetery a verse that put him to rest with love and reassurance: “Kind Father of Love, thou art gone to thy rest forever to bask mid the joys of the blest. We’ll join thee in that heavenly bond, no fear, to take the parting hand, no fear. No [more] [man] shall dim that hour that manifests the Savior’s power.” The stone that bears Moore’s loving epitaph has weathered, but most of what is written there is still legible. Many other names there have worn away. They were members, families and friends of the historic church near the intersection of state Route 49 and Tallapoosa County Road 34, but that is not where the journey started. The cemetery’s story of more than 200 years in the life of the church is reported to have begun a mile away in what is now StillWaters Resort. Just a few hundred yards from the back gate at StillWaters, 30 or more graves are marked on a ridge near the site where a small country church once stood. The church was called Salem, but in county records, the cemetery is identified as the Canada Cemetery. The church, a simple log structure, reportedly burned, and in the 1850s, the Lockett family donated the property for a new church and
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cemetery some ways Hallowed Grounds (Facing) The Rev. down the road at Red Vicki Cater surveys the Ridge, said Rev. Vicki Cater, who has pastored cemetery that has played important role in the the congregation at Red an church's Colvin Collari, Ridge for three years. 200-year history. “The cemetery is the foundation of who we are in the lifeblood of this church,” Cater said. It’s a measure of the times through which the congregation at Red Ridge UMC has learned to love better and worship more fully. The cemetery is professionally maintained, and church members aid in keeping it looking its best. A church volunteer places flags on the graves of servicemen every year. Church member Ruth Lockett, who, at 87 years old, still lives near the church, researched her own family in the cemetery and learned about many of the people buried there in the process. Her notes, and those of others who have done research, have been posted on the church website at redridgeumc.org and in the free global gravesite collection at findagrave.com. The Red Ridge cemetery is packed tightly with graves, many of which carry such sweet sentiments as that left by E.J. Moore’s children. Large, imposing headstones are mingled among graves that are marked only by single rocks that might look like
