The Brown Family Cemetery is located in the woods off the road in Fairfield. This was the first cemetery that I chose to check out as part of the project, solely because one of the main goals of the project is to hunt out and document all the little lost family cemeteries that nobody knows about…and there are a ton of them! There are or over 380 cemeteries in Jefferson County, and this is just one. This one actually is the first one on the list from the county tax assessor that is just listed as “cemetery”… No name… No adress. So I had to do a bit of detective work even to find where it was. Not a clue where it was exactly other than a general tax map area, and not any idea what I would find, if anything, when I got there.
I drove out to Fairfield, following the directions for Google maps until I got to the supposed address and of course it was woods. There is a small clearing just off the road and a bit of gravel with a couple of posts that said “DANGER NO TRESSPASSING”! So of course I trespassed all over the place! (I’m bad that way)
I actually was very careful trudging through weeds and kudzu and I thought that it was gonna be a completely unmarked cemetery, but I had the inspiration to go a little bit Into the woods and up the small hill, and lo and behold there was a tree fallen across a fenced off area. At the corner of the fence was a marker that said Brown.
Through the overgrown weeds I could see small stone sticking up here and there and a large slab at the top of the hill. (see main photo) The stones were just numbered which was very odd and then when I got around to the front side of the large slab stone there was a significant bronze plaque labeling it was the Brown cemetery, and listing all the numbered stones and the names and dates of the people that were buried.
I have never seen a cemetery before that is just marked with numbered stones with a central marker listing all the pertinent information… Fascinating.
This is one of the reasons why I do this, because you never know what you’re going to find when you go digging through history.
Approximate Address: Brown Family Cemetery, 1138 Tin Mill Road, Fairfield, AL
Active: No
Active Dates: 1835-1916
Maintained: No
Type: Family Cemetery
Approx Number of graves: 27 – all marked
Find A Grave Page: https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2458161
To get to it, you must cross US Steel property marked no trespassing, so get permission first.
This is the family cemetery of my paternal grandmother, Alva Brown Carpenter. She lived in Fairfield on Parkway with her husband, Dr. Burwell Salmond Carpenter, Sr. They had 2 children – my father Dr. Burwell Salmond Carpenter, Jr. and his sister – Virginia Carpenter Livingston. The Brown family had annual gatherings at the cemetery that they referred to as “Brown Town” with dinner on the grounds. Children were allowed to roam freely and play in the woods while the adults talked about family and times gone by….it was a much simpler time.