Liberty Hill Methodist Church Cemetery
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The old Liberty Hill Methodist Church cemetery is located on Rivertown Rd., approximately 9/10 miles from the intersection of Rivertown and Campbellton-Redwine/Cedar Grove Rd. Coming from that intersection the cemetery is on the right. Go slow. It's easy to miss. Look for a small iron fence enclosing a few monuments at the top of a bank. The graves inside this iron fence are only a small part or the entire cemetery.
On the other side of the fence you can see where the old roadway was and on the other side of the roadway is the majority if the grave sites. The cemetery is in very poor condition. Several trees were blown down during the tornado which struck the area on Mother's Day 2008. No trace of the old church is evident. Liberty Hill Methodist Church was the predecessor of the current Rico United Methodist Church. See the article "We Wanted to Be Called Green Eyes" by Helen Collins Selman for more information on the history of Liberty Hill. Several of the monuments have the same ornamental carving. It is a right hand, palm view, with the thumb and index fingers extended and the remaining fingers folded down. I don’t remember seeing this ornamentation on grave monuments before. It’s obviously a religious reference but further investigation is needed to determine if it is more specific to the Methodist denomination or to the time period of this cemetery in general. |