Mt. Vernon, Franklin County
This burial ground served the farming community of Rockhill, settled after the Civil War (1861-65). The high childhood mortality rate of that era accounts for many graves here. Earliest known burial was Mary Hitchens, who died about 1875 at age 12. Oldest dated stone marks the grave of two-year-old Willie Terrell (d. 1881) Of the 148 known graves, 90 are unmarked. A cemetery committee bought the site in 1919. Like many rural settlements, Rockhill began to decline in the 1930s Depression. The community's churches and school vanished, but the cemetery remains a link to its past. (1977)