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mcc-jrr_374-002
Rawlings - Lanier, 37-4 Summary Report, page 2
This cemetery provides the only example of an intact table tomb in the portion of Madison County encompassed by Redstone Arsenal. The table tomb has a tablet inscribed for Mrs. (Mary) Ann Lanier Rawlings, who died January 15, 1823, at the age of 20. She was a daughter of Isaac Lanier (1767 - 1827), who came to Madison County and bought pre-arsenal lands to live among his brothers, Thomas and William Lanier. William Lanier, uncle of Ann L. Rawlins, is buried in the Jordan - Lanier Cemetery (51-1), about a mile southwest of the Rawlins - Lanier Cemetery. Ann Lanier Rawlins was also a sister of Clarissa Lanier Boddie (later, Dickson), who bought land in Section 5, T5-R1W, which is just over two miles southwest of this cemetery. Among his other holdings, Ann's husband Eldred Rawlins was the first recorded owner of land half a mile south of the present Redstone Arsenal airfield, being the south half of Section 25 in T4-R2W. He purchased this land on February 3, 1818, when it was first made available by the U. S. Government land office. Eldred was involved in numerous land transactions involving pre-arsenal lands, and he also served as cashier of the Planters' and Merchants' Bank in Huntsville. Apparently, from the old land records, Ann's husband Eldred Rawlins never came into possession of the land around the cemetery where she is buried. There is reference in Madison County's first deed book (A, on page 210) that the original owner of the land, John Couch, sold the north half of Section 22 to Isaac Jackson in 1815. The south half of the section is not addressed in that particular deed, but other references, upon subsequent sales, state that the south half of Section 22 was sold by Couch to Isaac Lanier, who is known to have died in 1827. His widow Mary J. Dickson Lanier is shown in 1832 as selling the land of the south half of Section 22 to William Brandon (Deed Book N, page 554). Apparently, Mary J. Lanier (wife of the senior Isaac - see Lanier Cemetery, 46-3) actually owned the land where the Rawlings - Lanier Cemetery is located at the time when Mary Ann Lanier Rawlins was buried there. Since Eldred Rawlins is almost certainly not buried in the cemetery, it perhaps should more properly be known as another Lanier Cemetery - especially since the only other recorded burial in the little cemetery was for a child, William Dickson Lanier, who was born in 1830 and died before reaching his 10th birthday (see caption under photo at top). 2 - (1838)