Volunteers put cemeteries on register

Buffy Ozbirn and Sharon Mugno research graves in Old Town Cemetery in Russellville.

The volunteers at the Franklin County Archives are constantly working behind the scenes to make sure the history of the county is preserved, and their latest project is a testament to that work.
Since August, volunteers Sharon Mugno and Buffy Ozbirn have been scouring the county to gather information on the county’s older cemeteries so they can be officially listed in the Alabama Historical Cemetery Registry – something that Archive Director Chris Ozbirn said is an honor.
“It’s a very prestigious thing to have a cemetery listed on the registry,” Chris Ozbirn said. “We noticed that we didn’t have many listed in Franklin County and decided it was time to get that done.”
Chris Ozbirn said Buffy Ozbirn, who is her daughter, and Mugno have spent many hours out in the county taking down specific details that the historical registry must have documented before a cemetery can be accepted.
“There is a lot of paperwork involved in getting the cemeteries registered and these two have really done a great job going out and getting the information and being dedicated to the project,” she said.
Mugno said they gather physical information about the cemetery as well as information about the people buried there.
“We have to determine what the oldest grave is and the most recent grave, and we have to note the different kinds of headstones and footstones, the layout and if there are any military graves,” Mugno said. “It’s actually been pretty interesting to see these different cemeteries and see how differently people did things years ago.”
Franklin County has over 200 cemeteries documented at the Archive office but Chris Ozbirn said their recent research actually turned up a cemetery that wasn’t recognized at all.
“They just happened to find a cemetery that was on some family-owned land and come to find out, there was a man in here from Ohio a couple weeks ago that was looking for that very cemetery,” she said. “It just goes to show that this work is important to somebody out there who might be looking for their ancestors or relatives. We have more people in here more than you’d think who are looking for older cemeteries.”
Currently Franklin County has nine cemeteries listed on the registry including Counts Cemetery, Denton Hollow Cemetery, Devaney Cemetery, Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Macedonia Cemetery, Wilson-Noe Cemetery, Cherry Hill Cemetery, Sargent Cemetery and
Sadler Cemetery.
Mugno said Franklin County will have 19 more cemeteries listed on the registry either this week or next week and will have seven more listed as soon as the paperwork for those cemeteries is sent in.
“This has been an interesting process seeing some of the oldest graves, like Maj. William Russell’s grave at the Denton Hollow Cemetery, and some of the really old headstones,” she said.
Buffy Ozbirn added that they have even found out some interesting facts while doing their research like how a mother and her seven children were killed in 1921.
“When we were at the Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, we found family graves for a mother and seven of her children who were killed by the tornado that came through Franklin County in April of 1921,” Buffy Ozbirn said. “That was strange to find out in light of everything that happened here this past April.”
Once a cemetery has been officially accepted, Chris Ozbirn said she and the Franklin County Commission receive letters and she receives an official certificate that she will keep in a binder at the Archive office.
“This is a good service to the community because once these cemeteries are added to the registry they cannot be altered,” she said. “It offers protection from someone wanting to bulldoze it or tear it down so that the history of those cemeteries will always be preserved.”