Reviving a historic Campbell County cemetery

If the importance of a cemetery was measured by the number of prominent people interred there per square foot, Central Virginia’s most historic graveyard would not be the Old City Cemetery or Spring Hill.

Rather, the leading candidate would have to be an obscure Campbell County burial ground measuring just 20-by-30 feet. The eight graves it contains include those of:

- John Clark (1745-1819). A captain in the Revolutionary War and cousin of Lynchburg founder John Lynch, he was one of the original city trustees. Later, he was a judge in Campbell County, a member of the House of Delegates and Campbell County sheriff.

- William Clark (1790-1822), who fought in the War of 1812 and served in the House of Delegates.

- Christopher Henderson Clark (1767-1828), the one-time owner of historic Sandusky. Born in 1767, he was one of Bedford County’s earliest commonwealth’s attorneys, then a delegate, and finally served a term in the U.S. House of Representatives. His brother became governor of Kentucky.

- John “Captain Jack” Leftwich (1783-1833), a planter and captain in the Virginia militia. Yet another House of Delegates member, he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel during the Civil War.

Cham Light is proud of all of them, along with the four women (Martha Clark, Mary Bullock Moore, Sally Walton Leftwich and Mary Moore Clark) who are also spending eternity there.

“They had a hard life back then,” he said. “They were pioneers.”

If they were still around, they’d probably be proud of him, too.

Saturday, all this family pride will come into focus with a rededication of the family cemetery — located at the bucolic corner of Lawyers and Missionary Manor roads — at 11 a.m. Clark and Leftwich family members will be coming in from as far away as Plano, Texas and Pittsburgh.

The location is fitting, because Cham Light is, himself, a lawyer. And so was Christopher Clark.

Light had known about the cemetery since he was a child, but grew up away from Lynchburg. When he returned, he couldn’t help but notice that the plot had become overgrown, the iron fence surrounding it rusted and swaybacked.

“What really got my attention,” he said, “was the fact that the bank on one side was badly eroded. If that had kept up, some bodies might have ended up in the middle of the street.”

The gravestones were long gone, so there was no way of knowing who was buried there. That prompted some archaelogical detective work, undertaken by the Lynchburg Historical Society and the engineering firm of Hurt & Proffitt, and Light and others used the Internet to track down descendants and information.

The county highway department fixed the erosion, the fence was taken down and donated to the Old City Cemetery, and local mason Wesley Ward built a lovely enclosing wall out of Campbell County stone.

“Since we don’t really know who’s where,” Light said, “we’ve put up a marker listing the names of all eight people.”

This area is full of little forgotten cemeteries like the Clark/Leftwich plots, orphaned when all the family members either died off or moved away.

“Putting this back together has really brought the family closer together,” Light said. “It’s been a three-year project, and I’ve gotten in contact with a lot of relatives I’ve never met.”

The owners of the house that abuts the cemetery have also been supportive, Light said. A sign in their yard reads: “No Trespassing. Guard Dogs on Duty.”

And now, so is the Clark family.