Honoring my Great, Great Grandfather Grimes

Today Jim and I talked to Heath Wyrosdick, owner of Horizon Monument Company,  to discuss ordering a Civil War Military flat granite marker to place at the gravesite of my G-G-Grandfather John William Grimes who is buried in a Grimes family cemetery near Curtis community where I grew up.

Grimes Reunion

I never knew about this cemetery when I was growing up, nor had I ever heard of John W. Grimes. I doubt that my father ever knew about him either. My cousin Paul Grimes who lives in Jonesboro, GA always comes to our Grimes reunion the first Saturday in October every year. He has published a family history and we all consider him the Grimes authority. Paul's father and my grandmother were brother and sister, along with 11 more siblings.


My cousin Linda Westbrook and I decided one year to clean the old Grimes cemetery and invite our Grimes relatives to take their children to see the old tombstones there. No one has been buried there in many years. We got some inmates to help us one Saturday and we did more work than they did. We used clorox and soapy water to clean the tombstones ( later learned you don't use clorox on marble).


In recent years  money from a small cemetery fund has been used to pay someone to cut the grass and keep the cemetery clean. The chain link fence surrounding the small cemetery is starting to rust and we have to keep repairing it when trees or tree limbs fall across the fence.


Since we retired and moved to Alabama, we have researched several of our family lines and in the process, we discovered that John W. Grimes was a confederate war veteran. We got info about his regiment and where he served. We wrote to the national archives and obtained his CMSR (compiled military service record). He was a member of Co K, 57th Ala Infantry Regiment. The 57th joined the Army of the Tennessee and shared the hardships of the Dalton/Atlanta campaign.


He was born May 17, 1820 in Duplin Co, NC and died September 6, 1886 in Coffee Co., Alabama at age 66.  John William Grimes was married to Julia Ann Garrett who was born in 1827 in Montgomery, AL and died in 1903 in Covington Co., AL. They had several children and my great grandfather James Shorter Grimes was one of them. She is buried beside John William Grimes.


The flat marker will be placed at the foot of John William Grimes grave and a ceremony will be held to unveil the marker on the morning of October 4, 2008 when Grimes families gather for the Grimes reunion at New Ebenezer Baptist Church at Curtis community between Elba and Opp. The first Grimes reunion was held during WWI when the oldest son John was going to war and they gathered to tell him good-bye. The war ended soon after and he didn't have to go after all. The family continued to meet every year to celebrate Grandmother Grimes birthday the first Sunday of October. Later the date was set to meet on the first Sat. of October when more people could attend and not miss their church services on Sunday.


The New Ebenezer cemetery at Curtis was started when my grandfather James Shorter Grimes died from typhoid fever and his son John bought 2 acres of land from A.C. (Doc) Donaldson to start a cemetery. We have a copy of the deed for the cemetery. Several of James Shorter and Malissia Grimes sons and daughters and their Grimes families are buried in this cemetery, as well as my parents and we have a plot adjoining theirs.