Settled in the early 1830s, this area contains examples of now-vanished burial customs, including grave houses, tent graves and tiered ledger stones. This talk takes the audience on a tour of some of the oldest – and hardest to find – graveyards along the river, including Beechwoods, Cherry Grove, Adair and Hasty, highlighting the work of primitive carvers who created beautiful and unusual markers.

Abby Burnett is an independent researcher who documents all aspects of burial across Arkansas, specifically in the Arkansas Ozarks. As seen in the Arkansas Education Television Network’s 2010 documentary, “Silent Storytellers,” she studies such subjects as long-lost funeral customs, unusual deaths, grave coverings, tombstone symbolism, epitaphs and the work of early tombstone carvers. A former freelance newspaper reporter, Burnett has written numerous articles for historical societies, as well as ten entries for the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture on such diverse subjects as burial customs, tombstone carvers, early medicine and human dissection.

Burnett’s most recent book, Gone to the Grave; Burial Customs of the Arkansas Ozarks, 1850 – 1950, was published in paperback in 2015 by the University Press of Mississippi, while When the Presbyterians Came to Kingston, written with coauthors John D. Little and Ellen Compton in 2000, has been reissued by the Madison County Historical and Genealogical Society in Huntsville, Arkansas. Burnett has delivered lectures at the Association for Gravestone Studies’ annual conferences and written for the AGS Quarterly.

Over the years and across the Ozarks, Burnett has presented lectures to folklore conferences, historical societies, genealogy groups, libraries and museums. Her talks are illustrated using her extensive collection photos taken in Ozark cemeteries and museums.

Burnett is currently at work on a book about some of the most unusual tombstones and cemeteries found across the state of Arkansas. ​