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Lanier Cemetery, 46-3 Summary Report, page 26
Felix Lanier further wrote of this family that “The disastrous result of the (Civil) war left the three brothers (Isaac Alexander, William H., and Burwell Clinton Lanier) financially distressed. Past middle age, they were unable to recover their losses and chose rather to strive to retain the remnant than to enter into competition with those more skilled with free labor. The three brothers had held their property almost through life in common, as partners residing on the same plantation when called to their last home. They passed away in less than a year in the order of their birth. Isaac Alexander Lanier died on the 28th day of December, 1894, at the residence of his youngest brother, Burwell Clinton Lanier, at Madison, Alabama.” [This concludes the material contained herein as excerpts from that written about a hundred years ago by Felix Robertson Lanier regarding his relatives in Madison County, Alabama.] In summary, the members of the Lanier family buried on the arsenal in the little cemetery designated now as site 46-3 are the descendants of an Isaac Lanier, born in 1767 in North Carolina and died December 15, 1827 in Madison County, Alabama. Isaac himself is almost certainly buried in what is now called the Rawlins - Lanier Cemetery (see also), but there is no inscribed stone to mark the precise spot. He appears to have come to this location around 1819, after all of his children reached adulthood. His daughter Clarissa Lanier Boddie and his brothers, Thomas and the Reverend William Lanier, were already residing in Madison County on pre-arsenal lands, along with William's wife Ann Dickson Lanier. Ann Dickson Lanier was a sister of Isaac's 2nd wife, Mary J. Dickson Lanier. With these strong relationships, Isaac may have come to Madison County with the idea to reunite the Lanier clan before he died. His daughter Clarissa was first married to Thomas Hill Boddie, who must have been disabled, in order for her to buy pre-arsenal government land in her own name in 1818. This land was located beside the lands bought by her uncle Thomas Lanier. Clarissa's husband Thomas Boddie died in 1826, and she married Samuel Henry Neely Dickson in Autauga County, AL on December 19, 1832, after her father Isaac Lanier had died in 1827. Clarissa and her mother (Mary J. Dickson Lanier, widow of Isaac) lived beside one another in Autauga County AL at 26 - (2016)