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mcc-jrr_891-139

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Timmons Cemetery, 89-1 Summary Report, page 139

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Have you come across Hugh Finch and Elizabeth ? I do not know where they are buried. They must have lived somewhere close to Timmons for John to have met Catharine. Mrs. Thompson said in her book that Hugh was in needy circumstances in his old age. He was a Justice of the Peace at an earlier time. Ned and I have tried to piece together where the homeplace was. Ned does not remember at all, except we got a brick. I seem to remember we went past the cemetery just a short way because we saw the chimney bricks. We did not go exploring. It was in plain view. The chain link fence was built after 1970, because it was not there when we visited the cemetery. We just walked up to the wall. In view of the above, it would seem that the Timmons family in Madison County perhaps represents the epitome of the tragic outcomes of the Old South's way of life. John Timmons amassed an enormous fortune, with associated power and prestige for the time, entering into “high finances” of transactions with numerous other plantation owners. He married well and started a large family, but few lived to maturity. Even before the ravages of the Civil War, his family was in demise with respect to their health. Only one son, William Hardie Timmons, survived into and through the Reconstruction period after the war. William in turn was survived by only one adult daughter and a few grandchildren from his son John H. Timmons. Eventually, the grandchildren of William (and his sole remaining child, daughter Sophie Timmons Jordan) sold the old plantation out of the family. Now only the cemetery itself, hidden in deep woods, remains as witness to the grandeur of the early Timmons plantation life - truly a grandeur “gone with the wind”. Prepared by John P. Rankin, February 6, 2005; revised September 20, 2005 139 - (3088)    

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