Tombstone Tuesday: “Almost” Buried Together

Pinckney Lafayette Chandler and Susan Elliotte Vance Chandler Davenport

My great-great-grandparents are “almost” buried together at Oak Hill Methodist Church Cemetery in Greenville County, South Carolina.

Pinckney Lafayette Chandler was the 3rd child of Willis C. Chandler and his wife, Leanna Campbell Chandler. Longtime residents of Greenville County, all three were members of Fork Shoals Baptist Church in Pelzer, Greenville County, South Carolina. Pinckney was born 29 December 1842. At the age of 18, on 19 June 1861 (the day I was born many years later), he joined for duty and enrolled in Hamptons Legion, Company E of the South Carolina Volunteers, CSA. This was one of the companies that fought at the First Battle of Manassas, Virginia on 21 July 1861 and was the battle that Thomas J. Jackson stood his ground and earned the nickname “Stonewall” Jackson. Pinckney is listed on a Surgeon’s Certificate at Camp Butler on 24 October 1861 and later appears on a list of sick and wounded on 27 October 1861 with what appears to say “Bronchitis Chron.” which I assume means Chronic Bronchitis.

He married a neighbor, Susan Elliotte Vance (daughter of William Gilmer Vance and Sisaly Devenport Vance) probably around the summer of 1866- based on the birth of their son. Susan was born on 26 March 1846. He would have been about 23 and she was about 20 years old. Their only child (my great-grandfather), Dr. William Vance Chandler was born the next year on 13 July 1867 in Greenville County, South Carolina near the area at that time called Chandler, South Carolina. Dr. Chandler later said his father took a fever (some thought they remember it being from a mosquito, others say it may have been from the measles). Regardless of the cause, they wrapped him in a cold, wet sheet hoping to break the fever and he took pneumonia and died on Christmas Day in 1868 a few days before his 26th birthday. His son was only 17 months old. Pinckney was buried at Oak Hill Methodist Church with Susan’s family.

Susan Elliotte Vance Chandler became a widow at the age of 22. She remarried on 11 January 1870 at the home of her mother, Sisaly Vance. Susan’s father had died 6 weeks after her husband, Pinckney. She married Ira William Davenport who was born on 7 December 1847. They had many children before Susan died 3 September 1882 at the young age of 36. She was buried beside Pinckney at Oak Hill Methodist Church Cemetery.

The reason I say they were “almost” buried together is because, although they were buried side by side for years, when her second husband died in 1924, the family had a wall installed in the cemetery to in close Susan together with her new husband, blocking Pinckney outside the wall. I think it is very sad.