IAGenWeb Project - Clayton co.

Cemetery Index

Fanny Thomas

.... the true story of a small girl named Fanny Thomas who lies buried in a solitary grave in the woodland on a small hill eastward toward the sun. A small limestone rock with the fading uneven hand-etched letters of her name, marks the place. Fanny, the daughter of the Jim Thomas' who lived in Thomasville, fell into a molasses barrel and drowned on a Saturday afternoon while her parents had gone to town. Ted Nus remembers his mother singing hymns over her grave.
~Clayton County Register, Wednesday, August 23, 1978; pg 5 (extracted from an article titled "A walk through history at Arlington", which was about petrified remains of mastodons found near Thomasville, Sperry twp.)

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A tragic death was that of 3-year-old Fanny Thomas, who was drowned in a barrel of molasses during the 1850s. Her lonely grave is found in a pasture in western Clayton County. Fanny's name, scrawled with a nail in limestone headstone, is all that remains.
~Clayton County Register, Wednesday, August 21, 1996 (extracted from an article featuring Tom Amling, founder of the Clayton County Cemetery Restoration Committee)

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Photo taken, in 1983, of Fanny Thomas' gravestone (lower right corner), when Mary Jane Hatfield & Tillie Ridenour visited her grave.

Although this photo, from online Strawberry Point newspaper archives, is less than ideal, perhaps researchers of this family would be able to obtain a clearer image from the original Strawberry Point Press Journal, June 22, 1983; if it is extant.

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Cemetery Index