Lee
GPS Location
30°2’1.64” X84°30’28.74”
S-T-R Location
NW¼ Sec 23, 5S, 3W
Directions
N side of Harms Rd., 30 yd ENE of resi-dence 192 Harms Rd.
A couple of inscribed tombstones, broken but legible, are hidden in a large, dense azalea clump close beside Harms Road two miles south of Sopchoppy. These graves just above the slope into the Sopchoppy River lowlands are in the old farm or plantation of the pioneer Lee family, and evidently are the graves of persons in or from that family. An article in the May 1997 Wakulla Digest on the Harms family, which presently holds the land, locates the graves of the first local generation of Lees at what evidently is this spot (though that couple is not the couple to whom the two stones are inscribed).
The two inscribed tombstones stand side-by-side only a few feet north of the narrow Harms Road but entirely hidden in the high and dense azalea bed under two live oaks in the midst of mowed lawns. They are inscribed to Richard Oliver and Katie Oliver and give dates of death in 1923 and 1924. A broken piece of concrete that may possibly be from the marker of another grave, perhaps a grave of one of that earlier Lee couple mentioned in the article, lies a few feet farther north in the azaleas. The site is apparently in the SE1/4 of the NW1/4 of Sec. 23, T5S, R3W. There is no fence; only the bushes enclose the graves. The spot is perhaps 30 yards ENE of, and across the road from, a residence at 192 Harms Road (not the old Harms residence).
Richard and Katie Lee Oliver were well known at Sopchoppy, as was her sister Sallie Lee Lewis. The present-day matriarch of the Harmses, Mrs. Ollie Harms, says that the descendants of the Oliver couple looked out for the graves by occasional maintenance visits while they were alive or able, but she fears that all caretaking has now lapsed. (The offspring were Etta, Alice, and Dick Oliver. Etta Oliver Gunter eventually lived at Miami, where one or more of her descendants may remain.)
Date of site report narrative - October 2001
Surveyed by members of the WCHS, March 2007
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