Cotton Hill Cemetery volunteer work continues

♦ New fundraiser is underway to help purchase a gazebo to place on the property, continue preservation efforts

At the beginning of the year, the graves of hundreds of people were hidden in the woods just outside of the Aragon city limits on Prospect Road.

Now a group of volunteers continue to bring back the final resting place of people whose names in many cases were never recorded on their gravestones, and provide a reminder of what came before in Polk County.

The work began earlier in the year thanks to the efforts of J.R. Forsyth, who is now heading up a new effort on the Restore Cotton Hill Cemetery Facebook page and with an Gofundme campaign. They’re working to build a gazebo on the property where the Shady Grove Methodist Episcopal Church stood over a century ago.

The campaign sought to raise $3,500 toward the goal of placing the structure in the same spot where a pavilion once stood.

During the week, Forsyth updated the organization’s Facebook page to announce they found a gazebo for a low price, and were picking it up and bringing it to the location.

“We are trying to preserve this historic site for future generations heritage,” organizers said on the campaign website.

The site also reports the plan to use a local company to complete the work.

Volunteer work continues and estimates of the number of graves top more than 270 after a summertime figure of 180 was initially provided by volunteers on the site. They continue to find headstones that were buried under the soil many years before.

When Forsyth started the work previously in February, it was mainly a project to begin clearing the area of debris near the roadway. Then with the help of additional volunteers, they began finding graves and clearing more of the space around Cotton Hill Cemetery.