Perkins Cemetery

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Directions: From Seligman take Highway 37 south, turn onto East Roller Ridge Rd (FR2290), until you see the new water tower. The cemetery is behind the water tower.

Donna's Note: These directions above are not clear. It is in a field near the water tower but you can't get to it from there. You should drive down Roller Ridge and then go to the Jody Sellers house and it is in a field behind there. But it is fenced and so you will have to climb over the fence to get to it. When we were there the gate was open and it was obvious that cows had been running in it. There were cow pies all over it and many large stones broken off the base and that, of course, is the work of cattle.

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The first burial in the cemetery is thought to be Temperance Huckaby Perkins, daughter of Seligman area pioneers William Martin and Mary Rebekah (Hardcastle) Beaver. It is located on land previously owned by Tempy and her husband Dempsey William Perkins. Dempsey and Tempy had the following children: George Calvin Perkins, Franklin Perkins, Infant Child Perkins, Sylvania (Perkins) Roller, Mary (Perkins) Bowman, Rebecca Ann (Perkins) Bowman Weston, Mahala (Perkins) Coleman, Merit P. Perkins, and Margaret (Perkins) Vaden.

Because of the condition of this cemetery, it is impossible to list them in burial order, The following is an alphabetical list of the stones found.

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NOTE #1: This cemetery was transcribed in April 1999 by Roger Longley.

At that time he cut the brush and cleaned up the Perkins Cemetery then he transcribed the headstones that he could find for us. Leah McCalmon added some inscriptions that Roger didn't have that she had copied a few years earlier, along with adding notes to Rogers listing. Leah adds, "Late one evening in Nov about three years ago my husband and I visited Perkins Cemetery. Because of the brush it was very difficult to get to and it was dusk (and darker still under all of the trees) when we finally managed to get over the barbed wire. It appeared to me that the cemetery had recently been vandalized because there were a large number of broken stones and none had moss or any other growth in the very clean breaks. There were maybe a dozen other field stone and unreadable markers. Probably there are stones that have been buried over or maybe some out in the adjacent field with the cows."

NOTE #2: This cemetery was transcribed with complete inscriptions in May 2003 by Brandon Burns.

Brandon Adds: The cemetery is fenced, but very overgrown with brush. Perkins was one was the worst maintained cemeteries I found. There were several rock markers, but because of the tall grass, and hardly any rows it would have been difficult, if not impossible to make a note of all of them.

NOTE #3: Between Roger, Leah & Brandon the only difference in their transcriptions were a few stones found by one but not the other because of the weeds and no maintenance of the cemetery. The source column shows who found what.

Photos were taken May 31, 2010 by Donna Cooper and Phyllis Long

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Bowman Graves inside this area

Bowman Graves inside this area

Robertson - Broken Stones

Robertson stones in tree area

Phyllis - fence climbing - Jody Sellers in Background