Beth Cadieu tells of arduous, patient search for family cemetery
By Kevin Spradlin
PeeDeePost.com
ROCKINGHAM — Blah, blah, blah.
In the early going, Beth Cadieu found stories of her family’s ancestors only “mildly interesting.”
Submitted photo
The lone, unmarked tombstone that was the only indication of an old family cemetery in July 2012.
After being told her family was originated in Kent, England, and that the Reynolds-Hine tree branched into the United States by way of Virginia in 1590, Cadieu tucked that nugget away.
“I forgot about it,” Cadieu said Monday during a 45-minute presentation before the Richmond County Historical Society at Rockingham City Hall.
Then one piece of family lore couldn’t be answered. In an academic exercise, Cadieu, now of West End, searched for the answer. And searched. And searched.
“There was one family tidbit that always bugged me,” Cadieu said to the three dozen genealogy fans in attendance. “My grandfather’s father was a Reynolds, and so was his mother …”
No relation, she was told. But the woman born Elizabeth Reynolds Cadieu wanted proof, and that began a journey which continues to end with a new beginning.
“I was badly bitten by the genealogy bug,” Cadieu said.
Cadieu sought out the family cemetery. She learned it was located between Ellerbe and Mangum, somewhere off Cartledge Creek Road and Big Mountain Creek. But old descriptions of the Gee Hines homestead failed to account how neglect had overtaken the area.
Submitted photo
This image shows the plot cleared (January 2013), white crosses erected and the granite tombstone reassembled.
When alone in the woods looking for tombstones, Cadieu said, things can look awfully different. Still, she searched. She joined Ancestry.com and “spent many, many hours on the Richmond County genealogy website, and also the North Carolina archives.”
Cadieu also read books published by the historical societies in Montgomery and Richmond counties for additional glimpses into the family and its final resting place.
Field work, Spanky and Little Bit
With academic references in mind and in hand, Cadieu strapped on her hiking boots and took to the woods in the summer of 2012 to locate the Gee Hines home place and the family cemetery. She was alone.
“I very bravely go out in the woods, and spend hours and hours,” Cadieu said. “I realized pretty early on, the land doesn’t look anything today like it did back then.”
She was, Cadieu acknowledged, “a little bit discouraged.”
Cadieu returned to the books — specifically, My Pee Dee River Hills by Chris Florance — to assess and re-evaluate the description of the property.
“I can still recall the large, airy rooms, their high ceilings and plastered walls – the first such walls I had ever seen – the fancy stairs that terminated in a shelf-lined library on the second floor, and the great kitchen with a fireplace as tall as I was that reached form corner to corner. Outside, peeling yellow paint fell in flakes when I learned against the fluted columns supporting the wide porch (that) wrapped around most of the house that once had been the pride of the Pee Dee River hills … there had indeed been slaves to maintain this once-splendid house and the 1,000 acres of land that supported it.”
“So,” Cadieu said, “I continued my search. I spent a lot of hours walking through the woods in that area.”
Kevin Spradlin | PeeDeePost.com
Local genealogist Sandra Elliott, left, talks with Beth Cadieu Monday after her presentation at the Richmond County Historical Society’s monthly meeting.
Still flummoxed, Cadieu took the next step she could see.
“Very bravely, stupidly, I took names off of mailboxes,” Cadieu said. I called some of those people. Some of those people were very nice. Some of those people hung up on me.”
That didn’t surprise her. After all, her greeting went something like this: “Hello, my name is Beth Cadieu and I’m looking for a cemetery.”
Finally, Cadieu came into contact with Dorothy “Dotsie” J. Reynolds. She referred Cadiue to the Big Oak Hunt Club, which owned most of the land in the area, and to John Lentz, of Ellerbe, and a logger. Lentz put her in touch with Ronnie Reynolds, son of George Reynolds.
The pieces were starting to fall into place.
“Ronnie put me on the phone to his mother, Myrtle,” said Cadieu. Myrtle was 92 years old at the time and has since passed away.
“She was the most pleasant person. She had been to the house. She described the house. She talked about walking to the cemetery … but she was not able to go with us to try to find cemetery.”
Ronnie Reynolds met with Cadieu one Sunday afternoon.
“We looked … (and) walked around the woods a long time,” Cadieu said. “We tried to find the cemetery. We had no luck, but we did have a good time.”
The home place was, finally, found. What was left was “just like Myrtle had described it,” though most of the home had been torn down in the 1950s.
Kevin Spradlin | PeeDeePost.com
Beth Cadieu holds up one of the many references used to find the Hines-Reynolds family cemetery in Richmond County.
Still, though, no cemetery.
“I went back one Sunday, along Big Mountain Creek. I was just tired. I was discouraged. I was defeated. I went back to my car. I sat down on the bank and, low and behold, up drives old Ronnie Reynolds.”
Cadieu said Reynolds had a light in his eye and a spirit that promised a breakthrough that afternoon. Then up drove two individuals called Spanky and Little Bit.
The two agree to assist Reynolds and Cadieu with the search.
“All of the sudden, Spanky stops and says, ‘well, here it is.'”
Cadieu could make out a single tombstone, but Spanky and Little Bit were ready to return to their regularly scheduled routine.
As the group left the area, Cadieu worked feverishly — and quickly — to mark the branches of trees with tape so she could find her way back.
Protected
A logging company had ravaged the area, Cadieu surmised. Felled trees covered much of the stones in the family cemetery. Her best guess, she said, is that when loggers realized the area was a cemetery, they abandoned the area — not even staying to pick up the timber already on the ground.
With the help of her father, Neal Cadieu, Beth and other family members erected crosses and posted warning signs to help visitors to the area understand that it was, in fact, a cemetery. As a protected cemetery, the land is not to be defaced, desecrated or covered up in any way.
