BERLIN — A small, but dedicated, group of women have launched their own personal campaign to preserve what little is left of a small unmarked cemetery in Berlin and to give the dozens or so unknown individuals the respect, they say is owed.
At first glance, the cemetery doesn’t look much like a cemetery. There are no mourners visiting lost loved ones or flowers placed on gravestones. In fact, there are no gravestones at all. The only thing remaining of the small community cemetery is a small pile of broken concrete pieces carefully arranged in the center of the plot.
Cheryl Hawkins, the owner of the home next to the cemetery, said she arranged the stones there because it was the only way she knew to let people know that something was there. When she bought the house in 2018, she said the entire lot was overgrown with weeds and thorns. When she asked her neighbor about the property, she was told it had been an old cemetery, possibly the final resting place of several soldiers who fought in the Civil War.
Hawkins said she comes from a military family and even though she knew none of her family could possibly be buried there — Hawkins moved to Cullman in 2011 — the thought of veterans being buried and forgotten in such a way didn’t sit well with her.
“My brother came over with his bush hog and I put on a full body suit to keep myself from getting poison ivy or being stuck because what was here was just nasty, thick thorns and ivy type brush. I walked in front of his tractor, really slowly, to let him know if there was a grave and we only found one at that time,” Hawkins said.
Eventually, Hawkins recovered several pieces of other tombstones which she has placed together in the center of the plot as a type of monument.
The one identifiable marker Hawkins and her brother found, were the partial remains of the tombstone of 2-month-old Ollie May Kritner, who passed away Christmas Day in 1898. She was the sister of Ivey Nell Kritner Wright, whose granddaughters, Nancy Kuykendall and Jamie Bryant met with Hawkins around a month ago.
Bryant said she can still remember visiting the grave with her grandmother to place flowers on the headstone every year during Decoration. She recalled between 40 and 50 gravesites at the time, but even then most were unidentifiable and none were visited except Kritner’s.
“There were spaces in between them, so some of them had already been destroyed, but the ones that were here would just be a rock or a simple cement cross or something like that,” Bryant said.
Kuykendall has spent the last month pouring through old cemetery and property records in hopes of identifying others who may be buried there and has had the cemetery registered in the find-a-grave database as the Kritner Cemetery. She believes the site had previously been used as a family cemetery by the Warren and Herren families before it became the Berlin Cemetery.
“I have been told that there are possibly more Kritners buried there which makes sense because I don’t believe that Ollie May would be buried by herself without any other family there,” Kuykendall said. “It is sad that these people are gone and still should have some relatives somewhere, but no one seems to know much about this place other than it is a cemetery.”
Kuykendall has developed a list of individuals she believes could be buried at the cemetery including her great-grandfather, Union soldier John Marcus Kritener, who was a personal friend of the city of Cullman’s founder John G. Cullmann. Others include Sue Shnittker and Lenora Warren Tucker, who was born in July 1881 and passed away in December 1900. Kuykendall has also found records of an infant with the last name Tucker who she believes could be Lenora’s child.
She said this tracks with stories her grandmother used to tell her about many of the gravesites belonging to young mothers and their infant children after an outbreak of Typhoid Fever during the late 1800’s.
Kuykendall, Bryant and Hawkins have also enlisted the help of Berlin Town Clerk Keirstyn Montgomery and former Cullman County Historical Society president Dot Gudger. Hawkins recently submitted an application with the Alabama Historical Commission to have the site registered as a historical location and together the group is hoping install a historical marker or monument recognizing those buried in the cemetery.
“I’ve walked through here a lot in the past few weeks and a sadness overtakes me. I want so badly to fix it when I’m standing in the middle of this broken mess,” Kuykendall said. “You see the phrase ‘gone but not forgotten’ when you walk through a cemetery, but these poor people are gone and forgotten. At one time they were walking, talking human beings just like us and they need the same respect that anyone would want for their own family.”
Anyone with information regarding those who may be buried at this location are asked to message Kuykendall through Facebook or to email Bryant at harleygirljb@yahoo.com.