Miller Cemetery

Moro, Arkansas

 

Information below was submitted by Bill Smith on September 30 & October 1, 2005.

 

Moses Miller, who probably is buried there as well but whose grave has been lost, was my 2nd great grandfather.  His 2nd wife Nancy, whose gravestone you did find, was my ancestor.  Polly, whose stone you also found, was his first wife.  She and Moses moved from Cabarrus Co., NC around 1856 and settled there in Moro.  Several other families from Cabarrus Co. also moved to Moro about that same time.

 

I lived about 100 yards from the Miller graveyard when I was kid back in the 1950’s.  I sometimes played there among the markers, not knowing that those were the graves of my ancestors.  I am researching them in hopes of doing an article on the families from Cabarrus Co. that moved to Moro during the 1850’s, and the work that you and Jane are doing on this and various other cemeteries in that area has been of much help in this.

 

I am confident that you would find other gravestones hidden beneath the leaves and muck that have accumulated in that graveyard over the past century.  The earth is quite soft.  Moreover, almost every year up through at least the 1950’s you could count on that area being covered with floodwater for some period of time.  Given the periodic dunking the graveyard received, I imagine some of the gravestones gradually sank in to the earth and disappeared from view.

 

In fact, that may be what happened to Moses Miller’s gravestone, assuming Moses is buried there.  His son Jonas Miller (the “J.” in the initials “J. & M.E. Miller” listed as parents on the children’s markers) was still burying family members in that graveyard after Moses died in 1882, so I figure Jonas buried his father there as well.  Jonas himself died in 1930 and is buried at Oak Grove Cemetery.

 

These people are covered in my online Rootsweb database at the following URL: http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=ramer1