For some time Evans Chapel Cemetery off Highway 46 on Chapel Hill Road went neglected until Ellis Bennett and two fellow Scouts decided to clean it up and survey those buried there. Their results is a clean cemetery with a new wooden entrance gate and fence. Bennett said several of the early settlers of Cleburne County are buried there. The church is no longer standing and the cemetery has been neglected he notes. “It is an old cemetery. The earliest date was 1827 and there are some graves not marked,” he said. At the suggestion of Heflin Mayor Robert Rigsby, Bennett tackled the clean-up project as part of his Eagle Scout service project. Two other Scouts, Andrew Bowman and Tom Sarrell, assisted him along with some friends. Bennett explained that to earn the Eagle rank, Scouts must have a service project and he decided on the cemetery project. “The cleaning of the cemetery would preserve the history of our county and give dignity to the people buried there who no longer can help themselves, but in their lifetimes were productive citizens of Cleburne County,” Bennett wrote in his project description. His plan included weed-eating, cutting and raking the grass, pruning the trees and undergrowth around the cemetery, cleaning the tombstones, tearing down the old, dilapidated fence and building a new, stronger fence across the entrance. “In September of 2002 Mayor Bob Rigsby contacted the Boy Scout Troop 206 about cleaning up an old cemetery. As a Life Scout I needed an Eagle Project. After seeing the cemetery and talking with my Scoutmaster, I told the mayor that I would take on the project as an Eagle Scout Service Project,” Bennett explained in his report. He set June 24 as the date. “Some of the Scouts I contacted could not help because of basketball and baseball camps, but with the help of Scouts Andrew Bowman and Tom Sarrell, family and friends we tackled the project,” he adds. He said Tommy Cofield built the gate for the fence while the remainder of the group worked at the cemetery. “We started at 7:30 a.m. First, we did the weed-eating and pruning the trees and clearing the undergrowth around the cemetery. Next, some of the group mowed the grass and cleaned the tombstones. My older and stronger brother Jim started the hardest task of digging the holes for the fence posts. While these jobs were going on Andrew sketched a diagram of the graves and wrote down important information from the tombstones,” Bennett adds. Bennett plans on giving this detailed information to the Cleburne County Probate Judge’s office and the Anniston Public Library for the archives room where people go for information on genealogy. “After the mowing was finished, some of the group cleaned off the grave plots and raked the grass while others helped Jim with the fence posts. By about 12:30 p.m. the project had been completed, except for the fence. We stopped for lunch. Later in the afternoon Tommy Cofield, my dad and I finished the fence and hung the gate. The work on my service project was complete,” notes Bennett. Bennett, the son of Gloria and Thomas Bennett, said Scouting is in his family and he has been involved for the past five years. “There are four Eagle Scouts in my family and I hope to make the fifth,” he said. Bennett became a Boy Scout at the age of 11 after earning his Arrow of Light as a Webelo Scout. He attended the 2001 National Boy Scout Jamboree at Fort A.P. Hill, Va. As a member of Troop 1730. He is presently a member of Troop 206 under Scoutmaster Gary Wright.
About Wayne Ruple
Cleburne News editor Wayne Ruple is a native of Ashville. Before coming to Heflin, he worked for three years as a computer systems manager in Birmingham. Ruple has worked for The Sand Mountain Reporter in Albertville, and was the editor of The Independent in Robertsdale. He has also worked for the Shades Valley Sun, the St. Clair News-Aegis and The Daily Home in Talladega.
