Stone Gardens: A rural Madison County cemetery holds the remains of a native Virginian born in 1786
Abraham McGinnis lies beneath a weathered crypt-style stone in Bohannan Mountain Cemetery, a few miles west of Huntsville, in Madison County, his marker dating to 1842 and long regarded as the oldest still standing in the burial ground.
Born December 14, 1786, in Halifax County, Virginia, he was the son of Alexander McGinnis Sr. Like countless others of his time, he moved steadily westward. He married Deborah Clark about 1807 in Pulaski County, Kentucky. Their children arrived as the family passed through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Illinois before reaching northwest Arkansas by the 1840 census.
Madison County had been formed only a few years earlier. Abraham and Deborah settled there and raised a family that included James, Mary, Richard, William, Elizabeth, Thomas, and Nancy. Some of the children later left for Illinois or Texas, but the parents stayed.
Abraham died on August 14, 1842, at the age of fifty-five or fifty six. His grave is marked by a simple crypt-style stone that records his age. Cemetery records and local researchers treat it as the earliest remaining marked burial in Bohannan Mountain Cemetery.
Deborah outlived him by more than a decade. She appears in the 1850 census and was buried beside him after her death around 1856.
The cemetery sits along a rural road on the mountain that shares its name with the Bohannan family, many of whom rest there as well. Early stone forms, including false crypts, still stand among the markers.
An old schoolhouse once stood nearby, evidence of the small community that once existed on the site.
Abraham McGinnis left no famous name or large estate. He was a Virginia born farmer who crossed state lines with his wife and children until he found ground that suited him.
His stone, still legible after nearly two centuries, remains one of the clearest physical links to the first generation of settlers who arrived in Madison County before the Civil War and before the county itself had fully taken shape.
