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Sweeping the Graves: An Homage to Decoration Day [1]
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Date: 2025-08-27
How to Mound a Grave
Earlier this summer at the Winningham family cemetery in Pickett County, Tennessee, Carolyn Massiongale conducted a master class for her three granddaughters. The tools at hand were a garden hoe, rake, and broom. The topic: how to mound a grave.
“OK! What we do is take a hoe and rake the dirt up to where the grave is at,” Massiongale said, working at the red clay dirt. “But remember, it needs to be fairly straight, my children.”
The morning was warm, the cicadas buzzing. Pickett County sits perched where the Cumberland Plateau and Highland Rim collide. It’s a one-town county, and the Winningham graveyard lies far from that one town. Stepping through the damp dirt, Massiongale selected a grave for Haley Winningham, age 14, to mound.
Carolyn Massiongale instructs her granddaughter Haley Winningham, while her other granddaughters, Emma Winningham (right) and Kloi Schroeder (back), look on. (Photo by Terri Likens)
“This one right here, Harden Winningham—Harden was your sixth great-grandpa,” Massiongale said. She watched as Haley swung the edge of the hoe, dragging the dirt into a narrow mound above the grave. “There you go! You’re doing just fine. It’s hard, isn’t it, honey?”
Massiongale was teaching her granddaughters a practice that’s been in their family for at least two centuries. The Winningham cemetery is a swept cemetery, which means every year, every last inch of its grounds are hoed and raked down to the bare red clay dirt. That’s done to clear all the debris, leaf fall, and scraggly plants that accumulate fast in the lush southern woods.
Next, each of the cemetery’s fifty-one graves is freshly mounded. Last of all, everything is broom swept, until that red clay almost glows. It’s all part of preparing the cemetery each year for the Decoration Day celebration, when kin gather from across the state and beyond.
A family workday starts at the Winningham cemetery. (Photo by Terri Likens)
All told, about 25 Winningham relatives came out this summer for two workdays to prepare the cemetery for Decoration Day. That meant a bustle of activity—the ruckus of chainsaws, a tractor moving dirt. And people hoeing and raking among the rows of graves.
But it would be worth the work, Massiongale predicted. Come Decoration Day, all those grave mounds would be covered with flowers—artificial arrangements, fresh-cut bouquets, and even homemade paper flowers.
“After Decoration,” she said, “You can look back and it looks like lots of little flower beds here.”
Decoration Day Epicenter
From April to August, Decoration Day makes itself known throughout the Southeast, with entire graveyards suddenly spruced up and blooming. But there’s one region where the tradition holds especially strong, said Joey Brackner, former state folklorist of Alabama.
“It’s really the Appalachian South where you get the fullest expression of Decoration Day,” Brackner said. “That’s like the epicenter.”
Brackner grew up celebrating Decoration Day in Birmingham, Alabama. As a folklorist, he studied the tradition. The date for the holiday varies, depending on the family. Memorial Day—honoring those who served in the U.S. military—grew out of Decoration Day. But Decoration, as it’s affectionately called, has a different focus.
Tractors and worn brooms get the job done at the Winningham cemetery family. (Photo by Terri Likens) Tractors and worn brooms get the job done at the Winningham cemetery family. (Photo by Terri Likens)
“This is honoring ancestors, and strengthening family ties and community ties—and maintaining a cemetery,” Brackner said.
From at least the 1800s well into the 20th century, maintaining a cemetery in Appalachia usually meant that you swept it, for the same reason yards around homes were swept—a sign of tidiness.
Back then, graves tended to sink over time as the earth absorbed the wood coffin and body in it. So mounding graves was another important part of maintaining a cemetery. And, Brackner said, mounding a grave is a tangible act of caring for ancestors.
“You may have never met that person,” Bracker said. “I never met my grandfather, but I love him and I care for him and I respect his memory.”
Brackner, who is in his seventies, said swept cemeteries were a dime a dozen when he was a kid. Grassed lawns changed that landscape. So did major rural migrations out of the region. These days, tending cemetery grounds usually involves power lawnmowers and weed whacking. The swept cemeteries with their demanding physical labor have all but disappeared.
“You have to drive a long way, and up in the woods to find the very few [cemeteries] where folks really feel like they want to keep doing that,” Brackner said.
‘It’s Just Ingrained in Us’
At the Winningham cemetery, Samanatha Harding carefully scrubbed red clay film from a headstone. She grew up several hours away, but coming for Decoration has always been part of her summer. Harding said it’s an experience that fewer young people have now.
Michael Harding and his daughter Samantha prepare to scrub headstones. (Photo by Terri Likens)
“I teach high school and so when I talk about this, most of my students have no understanding of what’s going on,” Harding said.
She was working on a headstone in a row that’s special to her.
“This is my grandparents,” Harding said, pointing to a pair of headstones. “And then my uncle, who I was really close with.” She paused, fighting tears. “And more than likely my parents will also be buried on this row.”
Nearby, Carolyn Massiongale, readying another grave for mounding, reflected on why the family does this, year after year.
“I can’t really put it into words, except it’s just our heritage,” Massiongale said. “It’s ingrained in us that this is what we do.”
Baylor White gets direction from his uncle Dylan Young. (Photo by Terri Likens) Carol Watson finishes shaping a mound. (Photo by Terri Likens)
Massiongale’s a cancer survivor who once delayed chemo treatments because they conflicted with Decoration Day. She knows earlier generations kept the tradition going despite their own hardship—like her grandmother, widowed early with a large family to raise, or Massiongale’s father, who lost a young son in a farming accident. Massiongale had tended their graves during the workday. She, too, fought tears as she talked about them.
“I just hope they’re proud of me,” Massiongale said. “I just want them to be happy and know we still remember them.”
Celebration, at Last
On its 200th Decoration Day the following Sunday, the Winningham cemetery was brimming with life. Kids ran through the graveyard adding flowers to already-decorated graves. A small band of family musicians performed a playlist running from hymns like “How Great Thou Art” to country favorites like “Where Corn Don’t Grow.”
Children help decorate the graves. (Photo by Terri Likens) A family band serenades the crowd. From left: Edward Beason, Frankie Beason, Archie Winningham, and Lucas White. (Photo by Terri Likens)
Festivities included a ceremony honoring family veterans and a sermon from local pastor Rick Cross, who offered a message tailored to the setting.
“Mortal will put on immortality, corruptible will put on incorruption,” Cross told the crowd. “Then, oh, where is thy sting, Death, going to be then? Oh grave, where’s your victory?”
The Decoration Day sermon is delivered on the grounds. (Photo by Terri Likens)
And after a prayer—the feast. The long table under the cemetery’s covered shelter was crowded with the best from every kitchen. That’s called “dinner on the grounds” at Decoration, explained Carol Watson.
“Everybody just comes, they bring food—and we just eat like a bunch of pigs,” she said, laughing. She began listing some of the bounty.
“We’ve got chicken and dumplings, we’ve got plenty of potato salad, we’ve got fried chicken…some pork, macaroni salad, cornbread, barbecue—and it just goes on and on!” Watson said.
The crowded dessert table awaits hungry guests. (Photo by Terri Likens)
All told, ten generations of Winninghams were gathered for this Decoration—if you counted the ones above and below ground. Among the living, the youngest was a month and a half old. The oldest was Anita Beason—mom of five, grandmother of fifteen, great-grandmother of twenty-one.
“I’ll be eighty-four next month,” Beason said, “and I’ve come to every Decoration Day but one.” Her sole missed Decoration Day was when she was put on bed rest during an at-risk pregnancy. The child she was carrying then—her son Stephen—celebrated with the family around Beason.
Anita Beason hugs great-granddaughter Chevelle Beason; great-grandson Axel Beason is at left. (Photo by Terri Likens)
“Family togetherness means more to me than anything,” Beason said. “I’m just proud of every one of them.”
The 200th celebration drew quite a crowd—nearly 275 people. That’s part of the fun, said Lucas White, one of the musicians and a great-grandson of Anita Beason.
“I like just being up here seeing all my family and getting to talk and share history and learn history,” White said. “And figure out who’s who and where we all tie in together.”
Even though White had been at Decoration every one of his 18 years, he said there were a lot of relatives there for the anniversary that he’d never met.
“Our family tree, it don’t end, it just bends real big,” White joked.
Sitting and taking in the scene as the afternoon waned, Patricia Harding, Anita Beason’s youngest sister, savored the beauty of the scene.
“You’ve got the red clay and the trees surrounding it that’s brilliant green. And then you have the decorations, all the different colors of flowers, and of course the sun’s beaming down on it now,” Harding said.
In that beauty, Harding felt the power of her family’s collective past, and of its future.
“It’s just brilliant colors, like a ray of hope, of sunshine,” Harding said. “Like tradition and years past and—the future is here.”
Caroline Massiongale adds flowers to a headstone. (Photo by Terri Likens)
This article is part of the Living Traditions project, featuring an assortment of stories and podcasts about folklife in central Appalachia. Read More Living Traditions Sign up for email alerts.
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