Donation helps bring pavement to Graceland Cemetery in Abbeville

For 107 years, family members of deceased ones buried in the Graceland Cemetery in Abbeville drove on the same gravel road that was originally built in 1908.
Recently, two Abbeville brothers donated money to the Board of Directors of Graceland Cemetery Association specifically to overall the gravel roads throughout the cemetery.
The project was completed earlier this month.
Gene Sellers and Associates did the engineering design work and Glen Lege Construction did the overlaying of the asphalt.
The donors did not want their names mentioned in the article.
The entire project cost just under $75,000.
Sellers said Lege Construction had to dig up the old shell, which was compact.
The cemetery is located on Graceland Avenue and it was established in June 27, 1908.
According to the history of Graceland Cemetery written by Gary Theall, on August 1, 1908, Wakeman W. Edwards, William P. Edwards, Dr. Clarence J. Edwards, Sarah Edwards Petty, and J. Nelson Greene sold it to the Abbeville Masonic Lodge Lot 1 of Rosedale Addition, being a tract of land measuring 192 feet on Graceland Avenue by 359 feet deep.
From that tract the Masons created the “New Masonic Cemetery.” The price was $200.
On July 10, 1967, the Graceland Cemetery Association conveyed to Abbeville Masonic Lodge No. 192 F & AM, all of its interest in the Graceland Cemetery except for a 50 by 50 foot square in the northern portion of the cemetery, and the Masonic Lodge then maintained and operated the entire cemetery exclusively.
The first person to be buried in Graceland Cemetery was Francis Lovelace “Frank” Wall, who died September 12, 1908, and who during his lifetime ran a hotel overlooking Magdalen Square (at the site of the present Young Eye Clinic) known as the “Wall House.”
Several people who had been buried in an intermediate Masonic cemetery were later moved to Graceland Cemetery.
In 2002, the Masonic Lodge donated to Graceland Cemetery Association, Inc., a newly formed corporation, all of the interest that it had in Graceland Cemetery. The new corporation represents a reincarnation of the original Graceland Cemetery Association.