small slot&tab tomb at Wahoo Baptist Church

Wahoo Baptist Church cemetery
Wahoo, Georgia

Slot-and-Tab Tombs / the mystery of the rural georgia soapstone box tombs / burial cabinetry in stone

: an oblong horizontal lid (ledger stone) made of local soapstone (local greenish-grey soft chloritic schist) with two slots cut into it, through which the vertical head and foot stones are fitted, called a 'through mortise-and-tenon joint' in woodworking. The ledger stone is thus suspended over an internal empty cavity by the weight-bearing shoulders of the head- and footstones, and by either (a) long cut stone blocks (squared-stone-logs) approximately 5"x5"x(~length of body), stacked one on top of the other equally on each side, or by (b) one-piece side slabs, to create an above-ground stone box monument that resembles a tomb. The body is presumably underground since no remains have been seen inside exposed internal cavities.
166 found to date in 'Upland South folk cemeteries' almost exclusively in rural northeast Georgia around Wahoo.   ethnicity: English & Scotch-Irish and predominantly Baptist.   dates: 1848-1889.
presumably locally quarried & carved.

" Many [Lumpkin County] graves are marked with Soapstone markers
carved to fit with precision of a carpenter with wood. "
- DP

mini pic of slot & tab tomb diagram

    Lumpkin County GA [41 churches, 41 mines]
  1. Wahoo Baptist Church (est. 1819) (38)
  2. Mount Gilead Baptist Church (14)
  3. Old Soule's Methodist /'Word of Faith' (10)
  4. Brown's Chapel / Peck's Chapel (7)
  5. Mount Hope Cemetery, Dahlonega (4)
  6. Mount Olive Baptist Church (2)
  7. Stringer family cemetery (2)
  8. Siloam Baptist Church (1)
    White County GA [41 churches, 3 mines]
  1. Shoal Creek Baptist Church (est. 1835) (22)
  2. O'Kelley family cemetery (8)
  3. Bowen family cemetery (4)
  4. Old Zion Baptist, now Faith Lutheran (3)
  5. Cleveland Cemetery (1/3)
  6. Mossy Creek Methodist Church (est. 1821) (1)
    Pickens County SC [154 churches, 0 mines]
  1. Oolenoy Baptist (1+)
    Hall County GA [132 churches, 0 mines]
  1. Yellow Creek Baptist (28, all ground-flush)
  2. New Bridge Baptist Church (6)
  3. Dewberry Baptist No. 2 (3)
  4. Concord Baptist Church, Clermont (3)
  5. Eubanks family cemetery (1)
  6. Holly Springs Baptist Church (1)
    Jackson County AL [154 churches, 0 mines]
  1. Dodson family cemetery (4)

two slot&tab tombs at Mount Hope cemetery, Dahlonega

Mount Hope public cemetery
Dahlonega, Georgia

O'Kelley family cemetery, south of Shoal Creek GA

O'Kelley family cemetery
south of Shoal Creek Baptist Church

Shoal Creek Baptist Church cemetery, west of Cleveland GA

Shoal Creek Baptist Church cemetery
west of Cleveland GA

distribution map of slot&tab tombs in NE Georgia USA

all sites are within an 11-mile radius from Wahoo Baptist Church


slot & tab headstone shapes: flat, arch, peak, semicircular, head & shoulders, head & double shoulders


Georgia USA - Lumpkin, White & Hall Counties in black In Search of the Slot & Tab Tomb's Origins ...
Know of another slot&tab site that isn't listed here?
Here's a form to tell me about it.


maps | diagrams | search USGS for feature: cemetery
tom kunesh


other interesting SouthEast USA burial monuments


interesting, but not the same thing ...

  • "OBSERVATIONS ON THE FORM AND FUNCTION OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE GRAVEHOUSES", Donald B. Ball, Tennessee Anthropologist, Tennessee Anthropological Association II(1):29-62. 1977. An intensive survey of three contiguous Middle Tennessee counties (Cannon, Coffee, and Rutherford) has documented a total of 16 extant gravehouses in nine cemeteries plus to former location of several others. Built to cover an in-ground interment, these structures were found to exhibit a high degree of diachronic attribute similarity when recorded in detail and compared architecturally to one another. It is suggested that these structures represent a traditionally patterned mechanism for the tangible expression of sentiment on a personal, rather than social, basis. To place these little studied structures in a spatial and historical framework, data are presented pertinent to both their distribution in North America and probable European source area.

Gravehouse drawing,
photos of three grave houses in NE Georgia:  
  • child's low gravehouse ca. 1968
  • child's bavarian-style gravehouse ca. 1978. photos 11-14
  • group gravehouse

  • Triangular Burial Monuments
    by Lonsdale MacFarland Green 1999
    Center for Rural Life,
    University of the South
  •      Comb Grave tent-style
    comb grave, tent-style

    The tabletop tomb was a fad during the mid-19th century. "The people are buried in the ground, underneath the box tomb," Ruedrich said. "Yet half the box tombs I've worked on have had their tops taken off by curiosity-seekers looking for a body. So the more people who understand that no one is buried in there, the better off we'll be." - Dean Ruedrich, historic preservationist, Ruedrich Restorations of Bunn NC.

  • & btw, what does S.T.K.S.H.T.W.S. mean?
  • Falling Springs Baptist Church cemetery ->
    Allred, Overton County, Tennessee
    Overton County, Tennessee

    other sites w/photos 1 2 3 4 5 6
    slot & tab tombs at Falling Springs Baptist Church cemetery, Allred, Overton County, Tennessee tent graves at Falling Springs Baptist Church cemetery, Allred, Overton County, Tennessee


    aniconism
    in religion, opposition to the use of icons or visual images to depict living creatures or religious figures. Such opposition is particularly relevant to the Jewish, Islamic, and Byzantine artistic traditions, eg, iconoclasm. The biblical Second Commandment (part of the First Commandment to Roman Catholics and Lutherans), "You shall not make yourself a graven image, or any likeness ... - Encyclopædia Britannica

    cenotaph
    literally "empty tomb", from the Greek kenotaphion, from kenos empty + taphos tomb.
    A symbolic tomb, honoring the dead but not containing the body; often a tomb or a monument erected to commemorate a person or persons whose remains are elsewhere, such as soldiers buried abroad or sailors lost at sea.

    chest tomb aka cadaver tomb, tomb chest
    tomb designed in the form of a cist or stone box placed over a burial. Its outward form often reproduces the features of the classical sarcophagus or medieval effigy base. - Structural Images of the North East Project, England

    ledger stone
    large (typically 3ft x 6ft) flat (horizontal) stone that covers the top of a gravesite, flush with the terrain or floor; inscribed floor slabs
    One of the main challenges has been in repairing the monuments, many of which are brick lined graves with ledger stones on top and a monument on top of the ledger. The design of the graves was to facilitate the removal of a ledger stone so that additional family members could be placed in the grave (some graves contain up to eight people). - on Nunhead Cemetery

    mausoleum
    (Middle English, from Latin, from Greek mausOleion, from MausOlos Mausolus died ab 353 B.C., ruler of Caria; 15th century) 1 : a large tomb; especially : a usually stone building with places for entombment of the dead above ground

    mortise
    a hole, groove, or slot into or through which some other part of an arrangement of parts fits or passes; especially : a cavity cut into a piece of material (as timber) to receive a tenon: a projecting member in a piece of wood or other material for insertion into a mortise to make a joint

    plinth
    a block serving as a base for a statue or gravestone; the lowest member of a base; subbase

    sarcophagus
    (Latin sarcophagus (lapis) limestone used for coffins, from Greek (lithos) sarkophagos, literally, flesh-eating stone, from sark- sarc- + phagein to eat; 1619) : a stone coffin; broadly : COFFIN

    sepulchre
    or sepulcher (Middle English sepulcre, from Old French, from Latin sepulcrum, sepulchrum, from sepelire to bury; akin to Greek hepein to care for, Sanskrit saparyati he honors; 13th century) 1 : a place of burial : TOMB

    tomb
    (Middle English tombe, from Anglo-French tumbe, from Late Latin tumba sepulchral mound, from Greek tymbos; perhaps akin to Latin tumEre to be swollen; 13th century) 1 a : an excavation in which a corpse is buried : GRAVE b : a place of interment 2 : a house, chamber, or vault for the dead 3 : a building or structure resembling a tomb (as in appearance)

    tympanum / crown
    the top portion of a gravestone (or doorway) above the uppermost horizontal line. Traditional English and New England headstones had semicircular tympanums and footstones triangular typmpanums.


    b o o k
    recommendations


    Sticks and Stones: three centuries of North Carolina gravemarkers

    M. Ruth Little,
    Sticks and Stones:
    Three Centuries of
    North Carolina Gravemarkers

    1998 University of
    North Carolina
    Press, Chapel Hill

    "best book i've read on the subject" - tpk


    types of    --->
    gravemarkers
    figure 1.2

    gravemarker types, by Ruth Little in _Sticks and Stones_




    types of
    headstone shapes
    figure 1.10






    1 Baroque (eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries);



    2 Neoclassiscal Revival (nineteenth to early twentieth centuries).

    headstone shapes by Ruth Little in _Sticks and Stones_


    articles related to cemetery studies in Tennessee ...