Family Burying Grounds in Wise County, Virginia - 1936 WPA Report XXII - THE STANDIFER GRAVEYARD

"The Standifer Graveyard is on the end of a beautiful rolling spur, halfway up a high hill, about six hundred yards southeast and nearly opposite from where Phillips Creek runs into the North Fork of The Pound. Why they call it the Standifer graveyard I do not know. I believe that some of the Standifers used to live at or near where Orbin Mullins lives now, but if any of the name are buried there there graves are not marked.
I stayed the night of Wednesday, September 16, 1936, with Willie and Bertha Church. Willie is a former magistrate for the Roberson District and a distant cousin of mine. Bertha, his wife, is a daughter of Bad John Wright. Bright and early Thursday morning I was out and away back down the North Fork. A little piece below Orbin Mullin's store I left the road, went through a big gate, climbed the hill and reached the graveyard at fifteen minutes after six. I was alone.
The half an acre plot had been fenced, but, when I was there, the wood posts were rotted off at the ground and the rusty barbed wires were sagged and broken so that cows could go in and out at will. The whole place gave evidence of neglect and the older graves seemed utterly abandoned.
Three tall cedars stood in a row along the footstones of the Stidham graves. As the sun came up and dew dripped from the evergreen boughts I knelt to my task and wondered if the loving hands that planted the trees as tokens of rememberance were now, like the bodies in the graves they shaded, long ago returned to dust.
I found many unmarked graves there, but only the following with tombstones that bore inscriptions."