Cedar Tree

Cedar Tree Cemetery

Cemetery = Cedar Tree Cemetery

Vicinity = Ivan

Status = not located

Community = white

The 1940-41 veterans' graves registration gave locating directions:

From courthouse proceed east on US 319 going one mile. Thence turn left (north) on Ivan-Tallahassee shortcut (dirt) road going 3¼ miles. Cemetery lies 4/10 mile east of road.

The 1940-41 document listed the grave of Civil War veteran William Robinson for this site that it seems to place ¼ mile north of the well known Duggar Cemetery (having specified 3 miles northing from Crawfordville for Duggar). But there seems to be no report of this cemetery or grave since. Walks over much of the indicated area (most of it showing the effects of pine timbering since 1940) by members of the historical society in the last two years have not turned up any evidence of the exact location of the graveyard.

A 1937 aerial photograph shows that minor roads or drives then crossed the block of land lying north of Duggar Cemetery to Steve Moore Rd., west to US 319, and east to Lonnie Raker Lane. The graveyard might reasonably have been located beside a road. Walks along those now-abandoned roads still discernible, and along the borders of Steve Moore Rd., have not shown anything. However, Maurice Raker (b.ca. 1930), who lives at East Ivan about one mile north of Duggar Cemetery, recalls his mother pointing out, decades ago, some arrangements of rocks that she took to be a cemetery beside one of the now-abandoned roads. The road ran southwest from Lonnie Raker Lane to East Ivan Rd., passing just north of the Duggar Cemetery and meeting East Ivan Rd. just west of it. It made something of a diagonal through the block of land bounded by those two roads, Steve Moore Rd., and US 319. Mr. Raker says that the site, situated much nearer to Lonnie Raker Lane than to the road's other end on East Ivan Rd., was a kind of hill or knoll that featured a conspicuous growth of bushes or such. He last took real notice of the site perhaps in the 1970's.

The old roadway is still discernible as a linear depression. Mr. Raker and a historical society member walked its northeastern half in April 2002 but could not identify a site with the features he recalls, nor one exhibiting anything suggesting graves. His best guess after the walk is that the place was about where a residence is now located at 145 Steve Moore Rd., this near the meeting of Steve Moore Rd. and Lonnie Raker Lane. (The discernible path of the abandoned roadway runs under the house.) It does happen that that location fits very closely the direction for ¼ mile northing from Duggar Cemetery and 4/10 mile easting from US 319. However, the 1940-41 work also placed Duggar 4/10 mile east of the highway when the distance is actually ¼ mile.

The listed name of the cemetery probably affords no clue to its location now; only one red cedar, dead and having a stem diameter a little less than one foot, was observed in the walks. It stands about 40 yards north of Steve Moore Rd. at a point perhaps 250 yards west of Lonnie Raker Ln.

In this case the 1940-41 document's locating directions and its section-township-range datum are compatible; the latter datum is not inconsistent with a location near Duggar Cemetery. Nothing suggests that the two cemeteries could have been erroneously double-listed when actually identifiable with each other as one. While the locating directions for the two are stated the same except the ¼ mile of latitude difference, no double-listing has been found in any other case in the 1940-41 document. And there are no gravestones inscribed with the Robinson surname in Duggar Cemetery.

Elaine Taylor, who made extensive notes on Wakulla County cemeteries in the 1990's, denoted Cedar Tree Cemetery from the 1940-41 document as identifiable with Sutton Cemetery that lies more than two miles north of Duggar Cemetery. Her notes do not tell why she came to that conclusion when the 1940-41 document gives different locating directions for all three sites. There are no gravestones inscribed with the Robinson surname in Sutton.

Date of site report narrative - January 2004

Some information taken from Register of Deceased Veterans 1940-41

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