Rest in Peace Mrs. Annie Nicholson and Mrs. Rosa Oliphant

I stood over your memory, so deeply entombed in Edgefield County clay, searching for the rationale in the austerity and abandoment of your life offerings. The granite slab that seems to seal all that you were, I studied, for signs of authenticity and history. Your vital statistics revealed your story, as much as I am allowed to hear it. Born 1802, died 1864, Mrs. Nicholson. Born 1830, died 1929, Mrs. Rosa Oliphant. Don't even know the actual day you were born into slavery, can't even say Happy......well, was it ever a day of celebration? Your sister is remembered, just over there in that overgrown knoll, "All joy is dead since our mother is not here." She was 36 when her children carved these words of grief, almost running out of room between the irregular shaped edges of forest stone. I came here to stand among the spirits of my own. I collected the fragrance of turpentine that bleeds from the piney woods into the soil you worked and returned to. Whispers of ancestors, with obeisance, cannot speak above the tumult of your stifled protests and silent sufferings. I do not know them, and I am not acquainted with you. Miz Rosa, how you must have LIVED, don't ya know, 99 years. You were young enough to start over after the war, but you died here. Did you shout in that church right there, a convenient breeze among the peach groves carrying your hallelujahs down Long Cane Road stirring souls in shantys, and shacks, and scaring folks in manses and homeplaces. Sermons swept through the Mount of Olives Missionary Baptist Church cleansing like a poor boy's brushbroom across a dirt yard. Did you have an old black kettle that you used to boil peanuts and wash clothes? You may have used it to cover a hole dug into the ground inside an outbuilding, where you crawled to pray for freedom. Your muffled agony heard only by your Savior, the cast iron providing a place to hide your soul. Did you say "It is Well"? You would have great-grandchildren living today perhaps. Your heritage and legacy live on. I presume upon your life of meekness to ensure lessons learned and an inheritance promised. Thank you for letting me stand on this hallowed and common ground.