Church and Cemeteries...

Church's and Cemeteries of Carroll County, Mississippi

Herring Cemetery

(Note:  These directions are provided by Jim Norris, to the Grantham Cemetery close by.  Refer to additional directions at the bottom of this page to locate the Herring Cemetery) 

 Location: I found the cemetery(Grantham) listed under Montgomery county, as it is associated with the Pine Bluff Baptist Church area. From Winona ate 407 east approximately 10 miles. Take a right on Seymore road and stay on Seymore for about 3 miles until you reach Pine Bluff Baptist Church. Take a right on Ferguson Road (may not be marked as such). Stay to the left, approximately 1/2 mile there will be a fork, but stay left. Continue on the road, as it becomes Carroll County Rd 6 and then take a Left , at the T junction of County Road 8. Go down this road, and look for a house on the right, a white farm house, nicely kept, the E.L. Pullens house. Stop the car in front of the house on the right. To the left is a wooded hill. There is a path, alongside the pasture adjacent to the wooded hill. Go up the path and you will go into a wooded area. Walk about 5-10 minutes. Look to the left, about 50 feet or so from the path, you might notice some gravestones, but you will have to look hard. Walk off the path, and you will notice a barbed wire fence surrounding the old graveyard.   As you might imagine, it has become overgrown in woods. The cemetery appears to date from after the civil war up until the early 1900's. Surnames on gravestones include Mathews, Ferguson,  Garner among others. Many surnames listed on the Census of 1870, (township 17, range 6, page 259) are same as in this cemetery. There are unmarked graves, including a small section surrounded by an wrought iron fence, with no markings inside. Also, the Pine Bluff Cemetery at Pine Bluff Baptist church had similar surnames. I surmise it was it's predecessor in that community.   I hope this information is helpful to someone. Thanks   Jim Norris  

ADDITIONAL DIRECTIONS TO HERRING CEMETERY:

     After looking at the Topo map and a satallite image on Terra Server I
think these are the coordinates: 33.3168 degrees n, 89.6551 degrees W,
NAD27. This cemetery is at the top of a ridge and this appears to be the
high point near the Grantham Cemetery. We do GIS/GPS and mapping where I
work, when I go I'll take a Topcon with me to map the route and get the
exact coordinates. (map directions indicate this is directly southeast of Grantham cemetery, about the same distance from Grantham as Grantham is to the road, on up the ridge.)
     I grew up hearing my grandmother talk about the old Herring cemetery. One
winter day in the mid 1980's she went with me looking for it. turned out
the people that lived in the house by the old wagon road were distant
relatives so she stayed at the house and visited while one of the younger
ones walked with us. In my notes from that time I had the distance as
being about a mile from the road, but the USGS chart looks closer to 1/2
or 3/4. I would have stopped at the Grantham, thinking it was the Herring
but for our guide. They just waved their hand and said that was a "new"
cemetery and the one I wanted was up on the ridge. The Herring cemetery
had at one time a wire fence around it, but it was gone when we were
there. Our guide said that in the 1930's that area had been cut for
timber and the cutting crew had kept their mules inside the cemetery
fence. My ancestor was William D. Herring. He died during the Civil War
from complications of measles he caught while in the army. He left a wife
and several small children. He was, I think, one of the last to be buried
up there.

     They (Grantham and Herring) are in heavy woods off to the side of an old wagon road bed. I looked over my notes and in them I had written that only W. D. Herring had a marker the rest were field stones with initials carved into them. I was told at the time that Bry Herring had carved the field stone markers. If those markers are still there I'll get the initials, they might help someone.


Jeannine Kirkpatrick Smith