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THIS MESSAGE POSTED BY GAYLE CRAWFORD TO McDONALD FAMILY FORUM, MSG #5695:
This is not a family I am researching, but this was in the local newpaper/wk 5-9-02. Thought it may help someone. It is exactly as
written in the Chatsworth Times.
Graves hold secrets-but a Cherokee family cemetary on a hill in Crandall seems to be screaming to be heard after almost 150
years.
Last Saturday, Marvin Sowder with the Ga. Chapter of the Trail of Tears association felt a series of related events almost
compelled him to organize the cleanup of the ancient Indian cemetary.
Assisted by Joan Dooley and the Loughridge family, Sowder located three granite markers with names and dates.
"There are six graves there for sure," Sowder said. "We know who five are."
The discovery of the graves of Edward Adair and Martha Ritchie may be the only existing markers with names and dates
engraved for any of the Adair Cherokees. This makes the cemetery a very signifigant historical site in Murray County's history, as
well as the history of the Cherokee Nation of Georgia.
A third marked grave located in the cleanup was that of William McDonald, who was born in 1793 and died in 1851.
"We believe his daughter Narcena, who died in 1862 at the beginning of the Civil War, is also buried there," Sowder said. "Narcena
married Collins McDonald who was part Cherokee. After she died, he joined the 60th CSA and fought in the Civil War. When it
was over in 1867, he moved west to Oklahoma where he died in 1895. There is a grave beside him that is not marked that we
believe is his wife Elizabeth."
William McDonald is probably a brother or possibly a son of Collins McDonald according to Shadburn.
It remains a mystery why Edward Adair was not among the 100,000 Indians forced to move west after the government coerced
treaties against those resisting. His daughter, Narcena, and her husband, Collins McDonald, did go on the Trail of Tears.
Sowder hopes that the Adair Cemetery, Carters Lake and the Vann House will become stops of the National Park Service
Historic Trail. The purpose of the Trail of Tears Association is to raise the funding necessary to support the trail, expecially in its
recognition and interpretation in Georgia.
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