Froglevel Cemetery

Submitted by Lisa Duncan
Philadelphia, Mississippi
Neshoba County

Go Hwy 15 South
Take Froglevel Road (Old Edinburg Road) Road number is 2610 for approximately 3 miles. Go straight through a gate on the left to the top of the hill where that big oak tree and the graves are all around there.

Easier direction: Go down Froglevel Road when the pavement turns to dirt turn around at it will be that pasture on your right.

Something else about this grave yard... There was a man that lived in the woods at the edge of the swamp at Froglevel. All he wore was a piece of ragged old pants and wrist & leg shackles with chains hanging from them. He had not shaved, had a hair cut, or bathed in many many years. And his whole body was covered in small pox scares. They said he had escaped from a institution.

Sometimes people would leave him food scraps and other things down at Bail Branch Creek by a fallen tree. Late at night he would come up there and get the food. Never taking anything else, only food. They say if you left it in a bucket or bowl the next morning you would find your bucket or bowl on your back steps washed clean. And it would have something like blackberry's, apples, pears, nuts, or mushrooms in it. If it did not have something edible in it, next to it would be a flower root or tree sapling.

We was told that on the third day he had not picked up any food. That some of the men from around went down to the swamp and found him a big old hollow tree. The tree had been struck by lighting from the storm that had passed through four nights earlier. He was sitting straight up and DEAD in that tree truck with a wooden box in his lap. Inside the box was a blue baby quilt, two rag dolls, and a ring made out of twisted wire (properly his wife's wedding ring). The things was tied together neatly with torn strip's of white cotton material. (probably from her night gown).

They buried him holding his box in the grave yard. I always asked the same question. Why was he in a institution? Nobody knew for sure. Some said they figured he must have come down with the small pox (because of his scares) and lived. But his wife, two girls and son died from it. And he went crazy thinking he was the reason his family was dead.