What's In a Monument? - Berryman Cemetery, Madison County, GA

This article is published with permission by The News Leader, Community 
Newspapers Inc.

The News Leader, Royston, GA
Thursday, August 20, 2001, Page 4

WHAT'S IN A MONUMENT?

It's just a small granite monument, seemingly no different from hundreds 
of others to be found in rural cemeteries throughout the South.  Unlike
many elaborate memorials carved to commemorate family patriarchs (or 
matriarchs), or occasionally a local celebrity or politician, it is not
imposing.

Bit it is unique.  Its honoree is a mule.  Not just any mule, but Mrs.
Sarah Catherine "Sally" Berryman's buggy mule, "Old Fly".
 
The monument is about a mile south of town, toward Athens, on Wildcate
Bridge Road.  It sits about thirty feet from the road, next to a hickory
tree.  About a hundred feet further back is an old cemetery.  The markers 
there are much older than the one to "Old Fly", and I recently found out
why.  Several years ago, somebody stole the original, and Berryman
descendants replaced it.

I first heard about Old Fly from Sam Hilliard, who moved back to his 
hometown after many years as a history professor at LSU.  I was purchasing
some lumber which he had had cut off the old family farm.  We sat in the
barn where the lumber was stored, and he talked about the history of the
region in a manner that made an hour seem like five minutes.  Old Fly 
was part of that history.

I found out a lot more from Marion Berryman, Sally Berryman's great-
grandson.

Sometime in late 1864, Sally's husband, Robert headed for Macon.  He never
returned.  No one is sure just what happened to him, but there was a lot
of speculation and rumors.  There always is without a body or a grave.

And with the turmoil of the times, there was much room for speculation.
General Sherman had just passed through Georgia, leaving his infamous 
path of destruction.  Some think that Robert died and may be buried in 
a grave improperly marked.  Others said that he and Sally didn't get 
along too well, and that he skippped to Texas.

It doesn't matter now.  What is important to this story is that Sally
Berryman was left, at age 40, to fend for herself, with seven children
to raise, the oldest fifteen, the youngest an infant.

But she survived.  For 27 more years she survived.  The word is that she
was a tough lady.  She would have had to be to make it through the
reconsgtruction years in the South, playing the hand fate had dealt her.

Much of what those years were like, we can only imagine.  Some of it has 
been passed on through the children who lie beside her.  Some of it be
imagined through inscriptions on the tombstones of at least six grand-
children who preceded her in death.

And much more can be imagined through that marker which stands alone, 
under the hickory tree.  On the front it reads:

               "Old Fly
   Mrs. S. C. Berryman's buggy mule
         Hence this monument
        Foaled April 12, 1868
         Died April 17, 1908

On the back is a scripture verse:

"A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast, but the tender mercies
of the wicked are cruel.  Proverbs 12:10

Sally purchased Old Fly in 1873.  We can only imagine how many times,
over the next nineteen years, Old Fly took Sally to the cemetery.  To 
church.  To church.  To town.

But there is one thing we can be sure of.  She was there when Sally 
needed her.  And that's what mattered.  Why else would Sally's son, 
fifteen years after his mother's death, pay such lasting tribute to a
mule?

It is not enough, but it will have to do.  It has been written that when 
someone dies, a library dies with them.  This is true.

How many other stories of courage and endurance lie, untild, all over the
rural south . . . in overgrown, forgotten cemeteries, down roads which 
lead to nowhere?  The descendents have died off . . . or moved on when
cotton was no longer King.

But all over the nation, in prominent places, stand a lot of monuments
to a lot of people and to a lot of events.  Our nation's capital is 
covered with them.  Right here at home, in Georgia, the capitol grounds
are littered with monuments . . none to mules, but close.  No doubt 
some of those braying around the capitol at this moment will eventually 
be imortalized in granite.  Dead or alive, there is no accounting for 
taste in politics.

The gold dome in Atlanta is encircled with the likes of Tom Watson - 
John B. Gordon - Gene Talmadge.  Inscriptions beneath the statues attest
to their brilliance and fortitude.

You can have 'em.  I'll take Sally Berryman and Old Fly - any day of the 
week.