Memorial Day 2011

Coming home from shopping, we passed Cedar Creek Road on the main road, Wesley Church Road.  When the short way out of Toddville isn't flooded, this is the route we have taken for years.  Cedar Creek Road is a simple dirt road that dead ends about a mile back at what we would assume is Cedar Creek.

We've been down Cedar Creek Road hundreds of times.  We tried fishing, but caught nothing.  Another old timer fishing there claimed he caught lots of catfish, but that might have been the typical fish tale enhanced with beer.  He had left, but we stayed awhile trying to catch something.  About a half hour later, we called it quits and headed out.  On our way, there was the old timer, cold beer in hand and truck stuck in the marsh.  He was waiting for his son to come tow him out.  The road doesn't go quite the same way as one sees it when they've had a few too many beers - as the old timer found out.  We think the one too many beers also had something to do with his catching a lot of fish that obviously weren't there.

Mostly, we love going down Cedar Creek Road a night.  It leads out to the wide open marsh and we get an unlimited view of the night sky.  We've enjoyed many meteor showers and plenty of more nights just gazing at the vastness of space while our dogs run around doing dog things.

In all these years, we never knew there was a cemetary right on the corner where Cedar Creek Road meets Wesley Church Road.  The corner was too overgrown with bacchus bushes, greenbriars, poison ivy, and phragmites.  

Someone knew that cemetary was there.  Sometime late Saturday or early Sunday, the day before Memorial Day, they cleared the corner out to reveal the gravesite of the Insley family.  They placed a single flag in front of the fallen tombstone of William Insley, whom we believe was the father of the family.  Behind this plot stands a tall tombstone of a twenty-eight-year-old Captain William T. H. Insley, whom we believe was the son.  A single flag was placed in front of his tombstone, a silent tribute to someone who served our country 120 years ago.

To the left of the Captain's grave are two small graves.  The tombstones are too weathered to be readable, but the size of the plots and tombstones lead us to believe two children, newborns or, at most, one or two years old, lie here.  To the right of the Captain's grave is where we believe the mother of all three lies.

We don't know who the Insleys were nor do we know any Insleys currently living here.  But someone remembered.


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Mark Darien
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