--Photos by Leroy Blair
This cemetery is located on the old Tilley Farm off Peanut Ridge Road about a half-mile east of the intersection of Peanut Ridge Road and Mt. Olive Road. Leroy Blair of the White County Historical Society was told about this almost-forgotten cemetery by residents of the area while he was researching the Mt. Olive Cemetery. Here’s his report on the visit to the old Tilley Farm, April 4, 2001: "As you go east on Peanut Ridge past Mt. Olive Road, there is an old house, partially fallen down, on the right of the road.
You have to crawl under a barbed wire fence and go back past the house into the woods. Probably 150 yards from the house, you will see an abandoned 1953 Buick car that has been there many years. To the left of the old car about 100 feet is an old trash dump. The graves are about 40 feet to the right of the trash dump. It is very hard to see, as the only marked stone is small and about the color of the leaves on the ground. I went over the area three times before I found the grave. There is one marker with a name on it. It has the following printed on it: In Memory of Sarah Pannell, March 1884 – December 1884, Sister of Winnie Pannell Langley. I talked to Mrs. Winnie Pannell Langley’s daughter, Mrs. Blanche McEuen, who is 92 years old. She said that Sarah Pannell was her aunt and her mother bought the stone for the grave many years ago. There appears to be seven more graves. They are all marked with rocks. It looks like they were all babies. As it is only three to four feet between the rocks. Mrs. McEuen said she was told some of the other graves were named Fullerton."
After reading the above information on the Internet in July 2001, Evelyn Jumper Crowe of Brooklet, Georgia, notified the Historical Society that Sarah Pannell was her great grandfather’s sister and that the Fullerton children buried here are probably the children of her sister Malinda Pannell. Her records showed that Malinda Pannell was born about 1830 in South Carolina and married George Fullerton in Pontotoc County, Mississippi, October 28, 1849. Sarah E. Pannell was born June 23, 1830 and married William Patterson Langley November 15, 1848. The Pannells were descendents of Zachariah Pannell who was born about 1797 in Fairfield County, South Carolina, and died in 1885 in Union or Pontotoc County, Mississippi.
If you have additional information on this cemetery, contact the White County Historical Society, P.O. Box 537, Searcy, AR 72145.