pirate headstone in cemetary, photos added.

[relicminer]

Jeep thats awesome!

 

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[F2 Hunter 28146]

Are there pirates buried at Thyatira?

Publication Salisbury Post
Date July 03, 2006
Section(s) Lifestyle
Page 0
Byline
Brief Photo:53147,left,;By Susan Shinn
Salisbury Post

"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" just might be biggest movie blockbuster of the summer.

But who needs Johnny Depp when we have pirates right here in Rowan County?

Maybe.

For years, t




By Susan Shinn

Salisbury Post

"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" just might be biggest movie blockbuster of the summer.

But who needs Johnny Depp when we have pirates right here in Rowan County?

Maybe.

For years, the legend has been told and retold about the pirates that are buried at Thyatira Presbyterian Church in Mount Ulla.

It's just a story, insists Susan Waller, a retired educator. But it's one she's told groups of schoolchildren who visited the cemetery over the years.

The story she tells is this: These four pirates decided they couldn't live their lives the way they were, so they made their way inland, to Millbridge and Thyatira Church. They married and lived respectable lives.

But one day, they were found out.

They were tried and hanged. The families begged the church to let them be buried inside the cemetery walls. In those days, thieves weren't allowed to be buried on sacred ground.

The church relented, but chiseled only skulls and crossbones in the four small markers.

"There's not a name and there's not a date, so that's the mystery," Waller says.

The pirates got a one-line sentence in James Brawley's history of Rowan County. When discussing the Thyatira cemetery, Brawley wrote: "There are two markers said to represent the burying places of pirates."

Over the years, there have been stories written about two or three markers. There are actually four there today.

The late Heath Thomas wrote a slightly different version of the pirate story in a 1961 Post article.

Thomas wrote:

"Her Majesty's Navy captured a crew of pirates on North Carolina's wild, lonely coast. They were brought ashore, tried before His Majesty's judge and sentenced to the scaffold.

"Three made their escape and headed to the frontier West -- of which then Rowan was the last outpost.

"They settled here, married and begot progeny.

"One died before the settlers knew about his past and he was given a Christian burial here at old Thyatira where the Scots organized the church about 1753.

"Later the other two of the pirate trio died, both within the year. But the whispers had come up from the coast.

"They had pillaged and murdered along the Outer Banks and the Spanish Main. They were fugitives from the scaffold.

"The dour Scots didn't want the pirates to contaminate their sacred burial ground.

"But a dead man must be buried somwhere. The congregation agreed to the burials, but on the condition that the markers carry an awful warning to the un-Godly."

Poppycock, says Gary Freeze.

(OK, maybe he didn't actually say the word "poppycock," but don't you think it sounds kinda pirate-ish?)

"Where's the ocean? Where are the waterways?" asks Freeze, a history professor at Catawba College who specializes in North Carolina history.

It's illogical that pirates would be buried in those graves, Freeze asserts.

"Piracy ended in the Atlantic in the 1720s," he says. "There's no record of anyone accused of being a pirate."

For his part in the conundrum, Freeze asked a psychic who she thought was in the graves. She told him she thought that children were buried there.

The skull and crossbones symbol has been used as a sign of disease.

But why no names, no dates?

That is a mystery, Freeze admits.

Pirates may or may not at Thyatira, but those who definitely rest inside the stone walls include Elizabeth Maxwell Steele, who gave gold and silver to Nathaniel Greene during the Revolutionary War; John and Jean Knox, great-grandparents of President John Knox Polk; Francis and Mathew Locke, early patriots; and Samuel McCorkle, Thyatira's first pastor and a founder of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

And befitting the area of the county, there are scads of Halls and Knoxes and Grahams and Steeles and Sloans.

But maybe no pirates.

"If you wanna meet pirates, go see Johnny Depp," Freeze says.

Interestingly enough, Freeze notes that the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie was fairly accurate in its interpretation of costumes and pirate life in general.

Still...

Go and visit Thyatira on a summer evening, when the air is cool and the sun is slowly sinking below the tall trees. Look and listen and take in the peaceful scene. Study those mysterious grave markers. You might conclude that this just may be the resting place of two, three, four pirates.

Maybe.

Contact Susan Shinn at 704-797-4289 or [email protected].

 

[F2 Hunter 28146]

I hope that helps you guys out. And explains the reason for the Skull & Cross Bones on those four Markers.

 

[F2 Hunter 28146]

Found a better photo showing ALL four grave markers.

 

[pippinwhitepaws]

not pirates...puritans

skull an bones headstones - Bing Images

 

[F2 Hunter 28146]

No. These were pirates.

 

[mical66]

cute story , but even the locals agree there is no proof it is pirates and the storys in the paper are word of mouth not real proof, odds are no one will know for sure.

 

[F2 Hunter 28146]

10. Three PIRATE stones. Tradition tells of three pirates who escaped on
the coast and made their way inland, settling in Rowan County where they
became farmers. They were later recognized, convicted and executed and
their burial in the cemetery was permitted only if the skull and
crossbones, or just the crossbones were used on their gravestones.

The foregoing is taken from the descriptive pamphlet available at the church. <-----

 

[Muddyhandz]

Google 18th century Catholic crosses, medallions, etc. and you will find a skull and cross bones symbology.

Or it could be the bloodlines belonging to the skull and cross bone society like the Bush family who meet at the Bohemian Grove every year.

Or maybe they died from a contagious disease and this symbol warns people...... "Poison!"

Many possibilities outside of pirates.

Cheers,
Dave.

 

[mical66]

if you look at the Ancestory.com article that was posted you will see it is dated 1972 , and the Legend is it was pirates, no where does it ever say nor any article that there is proof they are pirates .
every article says plainly some believe and some do not , that they are pirates . some of the graves are from the 1700. that is a long time for rumors and legends to grow. when they find town records at the courthouse saying 3 pirates were found and hung then i will believe it.
until then i can see several options that other posters have pointed out that are very good options.

 

[scaupus]

wow...branded for eternity. However, I do want to point out, that until the Catholic Church banned them, I think in the 1830s, a crucifix with a skull and crossbones at the base was not uncommon. This is from a catholic forum:

I received a Crucifix from a friend and it has a skull and cross-bones at the bottom, just below the Corpus. Does anyone know why?
There are two possible ways to interpret it:
1.) The skull is a visual reminder of the place where Jesus was crucified, Golgotha (Skull Place). Based on an old tradition, the 'skull' would be that of Adam's.
2.) The skull and crossbones are symbols of death; showing them under Jesus' feet is a symbol of Christ conquering Death by His death.

The device is actually quite an old one. You can note that in many artworks depicting the Crucifixion you would notice a human skull, and perhaps some bones, at the foot of Jesus' cross, either at the ground or on a cavity below.

So, the skull and crossbones may represent faith in the resurrection. That begs the question, however, why it would be only on those 3 headstones, why there are no names on those stones, why they are together, and why it doesn't appear commonly on old headstones (I'm assuming it doesn't, though I'm not positive it doesn't).

I like the idea that they were pirates, which is the simplest explanation. It seems odd that they would be executed years later after peaceful lives as farmers, but after all, even today, there is no statue of limitation for murder.

 

[F2 Hunter 28146]

Most likely a masonic cross. For the 322nd.






But just a guess.

 

[F2 Hunter 28146]

if you look at the Ancestory.com article that was posted you will see it is dated 1972 , and the Legend is it was pirates, no where does it ever say nor any article that there is proof they are pirates .
every article says plainly some believe and some do not , that they are pirates . some of the graves are from the 1700. that is a long time for rumors and legends to grow. when they find town records at the courthouse saying 3 pirates were found and hung then i will believe it.
until then i can see several options that other posters have pointed out that are very good options.

The article that came directly from the Church that sits next to the graveyard that says they are Pirate graves..... maybe!

 

[F2 Hunter 28146]

10. Three PIRATE stones. Tradition tells of three pirates who escaped on
the coast and made their way inland, settling in Rowan County where they
became farmers. They were later recognized, convicted and executed and
their burial in the cemetery was permitted only if the skull and
crossbones, or just the crossbones were used on their gravestones.

The foregoing is taken from the descriptive pamphlet available at the church. <-----

THIS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ comes directly from the Thyatira Church!

The church that sits next to the graveyard state they are Pirates. No Diseased Lepers, No Puritans, Not even Smurfs, are mentioned in the Pamphlet that the church hands out. =)

 

[Viddy]

Edward Teach and his 2 main henchmen?

 

[Zodiacdiverdave]

I say..... dig um up and see what's inside.
ZDD

 

[gunsil]

If those are "pirate" headstones then there must have been thousands and thousands of "pirates" buried across the whole east coast!! Come on people, conjecture is useless, and legends are just legends. These headstones are common at all early cemeteries and they had nothing to do with pirates or masons or catholics, it was simply the style of the time. I have seen hundreds of these style of markers, and in areas where there was little catholic settlement and some where the family geneology has been traced and there were no masons in the family. It was merely a style!!

 

[F2 Hunter 28146]

You make a nice point, Gunsil. Except for one thing..... the actual church where these gravestones are located state these were indeed identified Pirates and they were executed for their crimes for being Pirates.

 

[surf]

They are Memento Mori.

 

[Hendrix]

As others have pointed out, skulls or skull and bones were at one time used very commonly to represent mortality on all sorts of carvings including tombstones.