Woolley-Edmonds Cemetery

We headed for north Perry County and the Woolley-Edmonds Cemetery and found it without incident. Pat Barton at the Alabama Gas Company in Marion had told me that morning where to find the cemeteries, marking the map with their locations.

That, too, was an intriguing story. I had learned at the library that the Woolley Cemetery was in extreme northern Perry County “at the place where the gas pipeline crosses Highway 5.” The next morning, I spotted the Alabama Gas Company and insisted on going there. A delightful young Southern woman greeted me, offered me coffee and found Pat Barton “who knows everything.” He lives in Heiberger, not far from where my great-great-grandparents once lived. He marked the map and gave me names of people who would know exactly where these cemeteries are located.

We turned north toward Bibb County and found the gas pipeline with little trouble. We took the dirt road following the pipeline to the top of the hill where Mary Ann Woolley Perkins, my grandmother’s grandmother, lies beside her parents, R. A. Woolley and Mary Woolley.

My great-great grandmother Mary Ann Woolley Perkins is buried near the left back of the cemetery in a grave marked by a tombstone reading “Grandmother” followed by her name and the dates 1836–1925. I wonder which of my distant cousins, to whom she was also “grandmother,” marked the grave?

Mary Ann Woolley Perkins is my grandmother’s grandmother. She was married to George Perkins, a native of England, who died in the Civil War. Their son was William Basil Perkins, the first husband of Elizabeth Rebecca Isadora “Dora” Mitchell Perkins Henderson.

After William’s death, Dora married one of the Henderson siblings, William Daniel Henderson. The couple, with Dora’s three little girls—Lillie Eva, Lovie Dee and Willie Mae—moved to East Texas.

KERIN'S NOTE: Online, you’ll find this cemetery under “Wooley Cemetery,” “Woolley Cemetery,” or “Woolley-Edmonds Cemetery,” depending on the source. Google Maps lists it as “Wooley Cemetery” in Brent, Alabama. See aigcemeteries.weebly.com/wooley-cemetery.html for photos of gravestones taken in 2013.

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