| Marker Text |
Several families came to this area from Edgefield District, South Carolina, where they were members of the Church of Christ in Salem. Among these settlers were the Berry, Martin, Coleman, Nickolson and Jennings families. They established the Edgefield community in 1848 and the Sardis Baptist Church in 1854. The landscape in this vicinity reminded them of their home, and most of those buried here are early settlers and their descendants. The earliest burials on this site may have taken place during the measles epidemic of 1857. The first marked burial was that of Rebecca Bolton Neal (1791-1873). The cemetery was known as Meazle Cemetery for a time because William Meazle purchased the property in 1866. His heirs, Elizabeth Meazle and George Masters, sold the land in 1899 but made provision for the graveyard in the deed. Other graves of interest include that of Peter Berry (1818-1898). Berry, a great-grandson of one of the signers of the U. S. Declaration of Independence, was a veteran of the Seminole Indian War in the Florida Territory and was a member of the Texas State Troops during the Civil War. There are at least two other Confederate veterans and several veterans of later wars interred here. The Sardis-Edgefield Cemetery Association was chartered in 1982. By 1999 there were more than 323 marked graves in the cemetery. There are a number of unmarked graves, believed to be those of early settlers and slaves. The Sardis-Edgefield Cemetery continues to serve the people of Cherokee County and remains a chronicle of its early settlement. (1999) |
