Bethel Cemetery (Ashley County)

Bethel Cemetery, located north of Crossett (Ashley County) and west of Hamburg (Ashley County), includes burials from the antebellum period and continues to accept new burials in the early twenty-first century. A good example of a rural antebellum graveyard in southern Arkansas, it is notable for the wide range of markers from craftsmen across the South.

Jonathan Callaway acquired land in Ashley County in the 1850s and 1860s, including at least forty acres from the federal government through a land patent in 1861. He deeded forty acres to Bethel Church in 1867. The church dated to 1849 when a local African American man constructed the building. (It is unclear if the builder was a free man or enslaved.) The church operated as part of the Hamburg Circuit of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The building was constructed of hand-hewn logs held together by square wooden pegs.

The site included a location for a cemetery. The oldest marked grave in the cemetery belongs to Grazilla McDill Harrison, who died in 1855. Charles Johnson, a member of the Ninth Arkansas Infantry, was killed at the Battle of Shiloh on April 9, 1862, and is buried in the cemetery. Jonathan Callaway died in 1868 and is buried in the cemetery.

The cemetery is notable for the number of headstones that include details such as Masonic symbols, books, crowns, lambs, doves, roses, and clasped hands.

For example, Pink Whitlow’s 1883 stone is topped with an engraved cloth draped over the top with a floral wreath below. A detailed epitaph is also included on the stone. The gravestone of Mississippi Arkansas “Arkie” Werland Franklin does not include her full name but does incorporate multiple engraved details, including gates, crowns, and arches. On the stone, Franklin is simply listed as “Mrs. M. A. Wife of James R. Franklin,” along with her birth and death dates.

For an isolated, rural cemetery, the graveyard is notable for including markers made in at least five states other than Arkansas. These markers were made in New Orleans, Louisiana; Vicksburg, Mississippi; Memphis, Tennessee; St. Louis, Missouri; and Evansville, Indiana. Many of the markers include the name of the company that created the stone. Surrounding the three-and-a-half-acre cemetery is an ornamental metal fence constructed by the Hulbert and Gould Company of St. Louis.

The long-abandoned Bethel Church was demolished in 2011, and vandals have broken several of the markers in the cemetery. Operated by a board, the cemetery is still in use in the twenty-first century, with a burial in 2022.

For additional information:
“Bethel Cemetery.” National Register of Historic Places registration form. On file at Arkansas Historic Preservation Office, Little Rock, Arkansas. Online at https://www.arkansasheritage.com/docs/default-source/national-registry/as0173_nr.pdf?sfvrsn=be467ab3_0 (accessed May 30, 2025).

Carpenter, Robert A., Sr., and Mary Imogene Noble. Reflections of Ashley County. Dallas, TX: Curtis Media Corporation, 1988.

Etheridge, Y. W. The History of Ashley County. Van Buren, AR: The Press-Argus, 1959.

———. “Pioneers of Ashley County.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 16 (Spring 1957): 63–77.

David Sesser
Southeastern Louisiana University