Mount Comfort Cemetery

Repeating“If These Cemeteries Could Talk…,” the title of the monthly series, Dr. AlvinJackson, Willow Hill Center chairman, led the Feb. 16 tour as participantsvisited the graves of all 37 persons born in slavery who are known to be buriedin the Mount Pisgah Cemetery.To makefamilial connections, along the way he also noted the graves of a fewindividuals born after slavery. But Jackson and tour participants made aspecial point of calling out the names of each of those 37, who were freed withthe conclusion of the Civil War in 1865 and died after the church, founded in1883, moved to its present site in 1890.“Call thenames of our ancestors,” Jackson said. “There is an old saying among our peoplethat you are not truly dead until they stop calling your name.”Nearly 30people, including a few children and journalists, took part in the tour. Theytraveled in a small bus and a few private cars from the Willow Hill Center tothe church in western Bulloch County.  Insight of Fish Trap Bridge, so called because fish were trapped there as farback as the 19th century, Mount Pisgah is sometimes also called the “Fish TrapChurch” and this, the “Fish Trap Cemetery.”But formallyit is Old Mt. Pisgah Primitive Baptist, and the tour began with Jackson, who isa medical doctor, and the church’s pastor, Elder Rufus Love, greetingparticipants from the church’s front porch. Standing near them was mother ofthe church Bertha Pryor, third in her line, after her own mother and grandmother,to serve as a church mother at Mt. Pisgah. Jackson thanked her and others for theirwork in maintaining the cemetery.‘Old Line’ prayerElder Lovenoted that the church is an “Old Line” or “Hard Shell” Primitive Baptistcongregation, and then began to pray in the manner of that tradition. Jacksonknelt beside him as Love knelt on the porch and prayed, rhythmically and with arefrain of repeated thankfulness, beginning with the Lord’s Prayer andcontinuing.&l...