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mcc-jrr_541-016
Jordan - Jacobs Cemetery, 54-1 Summary Report, page 16
The cemetery has a very good chain link fence around its perimeter. Within that fence, near the west end, is another fence that may have been originally erected to enclose a specific family set of plots. If so, that family was most likely the Jacobs family, as all of the markers with legible inscriptions are located near (but outside of) the inner fenced area. It is obvious that these markers have been moved from their original positions, except for the one for Elle Jacobs. Even so, the Elle Jacobs marker is small enough that it may have been moved from its original location, and it is still very near the inner fenced area. Additionally, located in the northeast corner of the inner fenced area are found the remains of the metal funeral home marker shown above. All traces of the deceased's name and dates and funeral home name (generally printed on paper and set in the metal frame) have long since weathered away. Still, the serial number on the marker is mostly legible, showing the numbers 275798 or 276798. Even with photo enlargement and enhancement, the determination of whether the 3rd digit is a “5” or a “6” is impossible to make. If someone wanted to learn the identity of the deceased associated with the metal marker, those numbers could perhaps be used to narrow it down to two individuals, assuming that funeral home records of the pre-arsenal days could be accessed and correlated from the serial numbers to the names. Since this is known to be a cemetery for the black race at the time of its use (and since there probably were not many black funeral homes in business in the west Huntsville, Triana, and east Madison area that used metal markers during the early 1900s), the search would be limited in scope. The Royal Funeral Home is also known to have conducted many funerals on the pre-arsenal lands. [One other note of the condition of the cemetery is that Max C. Bennett has set up a website to describe the cemeteries of Redstone Arsenal. On his site, believed to have been constructed in 1999, he stated that the inner fenced area was the only place where headstones were to be found. In the visit to the cemetery in 2002 by John Rankin, there were no headstones within the perimeter of the inner fence. All headstones found in the cemetery were outside the inner fence. Some of them may have been moved, but several are in fact set upright in the ground, and apparently have not been moved. More specifically, one of them is even mostly buried in the ground, with the base of a tree trunk beginning to enclose it. Obviously, that particular stone (which may be uninscribed, but it is so far buried that inscription status 16 - (2103)