Anderson Family Cemetery

The Anderson Family Cemetery is located next to the Transylvania County line near Bulling Creek Road.
The following article was written in the Hendersonville Times-News in 2005. The link to the article is
http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20050801/NEWS/508010342/0/search

By Jennie Jones Giles
Take a right turn on Bulling Creek Road, almost at the Transylvania County line. Climb the mountain along the curving, steep, one-lane road. Almost to the top, on the left, someone is re-seeding the bank. Find a place to pull off the road, climb up the steep bank into the laurel thicket.
“Somewhere in there is the old cemetery,” said a resident at the bottom of the mountain.
These were the directions to the old Anderson Family Cemetery. In the middle of the thicket sit stones marking the burial sites of members of one of the early pioneer families of Henderson County.
“Thomas Anderson, his wife and two children, John and Serena, walked to Jeter Mountain, in Henderson County, from Edgefield, S.C., in the year 1826,” said Margaret Anderson Davenport in Volume I of the Heritage of Henderson County. “They settled in what was then a wilderness in the mountains and built their log cabin beside a mountain stream near a waterfall. Two more sons and two more daughters were born.”
In addition to John, the sons were Thomas and Enoch.
“On a hill near the original house are a group of graves with time-worn markers,” Davenport said. “Only one of the names can still be read and that name is ‘Sara.'”
Two weeks ago, the name Sara could not be located on any of the six headstones located at the site. Most of the old markers are deeply buried in the ground, with only a few inches above the earth.
The area is so dense with laurel, rising to a height of at least 20 feet, it is difficult to stand up and explore the area for additional markers. There is a row of four graves with head and foot stones. From the length of the stones, it appears two were adults and two were children.
Above this row is a headstone with the initials T.A. and the date April 18, 1866, engraved on it. About three-quarters of the heavy stone is buried in pine needles, decaying laurel leaves and dirt. It appears some additional engraving could be read if the stone was pulled up and cleaned.
To the left of these markers, which were also found by members of the Henderson County Cemetery Survey team in 1993, lay another headstone. This headstone was not recorded in the Henderson County, N.C., Cemeteries book.
The Anderson Family Cemetery is identified on the county’s GIS System. The surrounding property is owned by Gay Elizabeth Markham of Sarasota, Fla.
In deed transfers over the years, the property is defined as bounded on the north by the old Anderson Cemetery.
On Feb. 1, 1927, the cemetery was excluded from the sale of the rest of the property in a deed transfer by the trustees of B.C. Anderson: “…excepting and reserving 1/8 acre on top of the hill which includes all of the graves where the cemetery is now located, which is to be reserved and used for a cemetery and to remain forever undisturbed.”
The Anderson Family Cemetery is just one of many historic, abandoned cemeteries in Henderson County.