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Museuming
Lois Swaney Shipp
Museum Curator Cemetery gates restored to original splendor Voila!
The beautiful cemetery gates are beautiful again! The artisans have
restored the gates to their original splendor and we are so thankful
for this. Now we can be proud again of our cemetery. Our
Hill Crest Cemetery is more than a cemetery. It is our sculpture
garden. The memorial tombstones are works of art. The one for the
martyred yellow fever nuns is very unusual as it is made of metal. It
is a spire molded as one piece. Many of the intricately carved marble
tombstones were sculpted by the local artist Adam Preher. His stones
were works of art with lilies and climbing roses and are exquisite. The
Prehers had relatives who were circus performers who came to visit them
periodically. Buried in Hill Crest are seven bona
fide Confederate generals and seven adjutant generals and hundreds of
Confederate soldiers. There are two Confederate monuments; one down the
hill is homespun and built in 1890, then later another one was built on
top of the hill and is glorious with bowed soldiers on each side and
used to have cannons on each side until a vandal or thief took one.
There are veterans from many wars in the cemetery, including the
Spanish Civil War in 1939. However, there are no revolutionary veterans
buried here, but there are four buried in the county. There is an
imposing tombstone erected in the memory of a hero killed at the Alamo
by the west gate. The original cemetery was
located in the back part bordering Center Street. The front part of the
cemetery bordering Elder Street was a baseball field and the catcher in
a game there was killed by a back-slung bat and he was the first person
buried in the new part of the cemetery. The movie
“Heart of Dixie” was filmed partially in the cemetery. I was in that
one. There was a Hollywood food vendor at the gate with free food so we
wouldn’t starve before lunch. Allie Sheedy and I sat under the
spreading oak tree and had a delicious snack. A
living tombstone is the majestic yew tree ordered from England to
commemorate the Rev. Ingraham. In England, the yew tree is huge like
our oaks and they don’t usually grow here because the climate is too
hot. However, this tree is over the underground river that flows
underneath the city and it is still thriving here 144 years later. Also,
more beautiful artistic gates of our sculpture garden are the memorial
Wynne gates on the west side by Center Street. They were designed by
esteemed Dudley E. Jones from Memphis in 1938. The gates were given in
memory of Captain and Mrs. Jesse Wynne. The Wynnes were an impressive
family who lived here since the beginnings of Holly Springs. They have
owned this cemetery lot since 1861. There’s more
about the cemetery in my book, “Windows to the History of Holly
Springs,” that everyone from here needs in their libraries. We sell
these at the Marshall County Historical Museum. Last
week at the museum, we had a visitor from England who said he was from
Cottingham, England, the home of Lady Godiva and Peeping Tom. He said
the mayor raised taxes so high that Lady Godiva complained to him about
it. He told her he would lower the taxes if she would ride through the
town naked on a white horse. To lower the taxes, she agreed. In respect
to this heroic deed, everyone closed their shutters while the lady was
riding through, except one. He was Peeping Tom and he was flogged for
it.  | | Eleanor Seale Ragsdale, Dora Ellen Green, Virginia Wynne Bonds, Elizabeth Harris |
Dorothy Warren sent me this great photo of
the cemetery gates in 1939. Standing in front are, from left to right,
Eleanor Seale Ragsdale, Dora Ellen Green (mother of Shep), Virginia
Wynne Bonds, and Elizabeth Harris (sister) in their Pilgrimage attire.  | | Sam Gholson - Top and one of his paintings |
Sam
Gholson of Holly Springs of long ago has given the museum 18 of his
beautiful paintings and three of his sculptures. Sam was the son of Dr.
and Mrs. Norman Gholson. They lived in the corner house of Chulahoma
and Craft. He graduated from Holly High in 1937, then went on to
Washington and Lee University at Lexington, Va., Pennsylvania Academy
of Art and Maryland Institute of Art. he settled in Washington, D.C.,
and was a portrait, painter there. He taught art, also, and has written
a book on art to be published, which we hope to sell at the museum.
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