Our Tuten/Bouknight
Cemetery project began in 1998 and was finished in 1999. This small,
family cemetery is located near Micanopy and contains the remains
of Patrick Howell Tuten(7/12/1830-7/5/1864). Mr. Tuten was a Private
in Co. F, 2nd Florida Cavalry. He died of Typhoid Fever.
This cemetery had been unattended for many years due to the fact
that many of the family members lived out of state and were unable
to care for it. Our organization became aware of the situation in
1998 and decided to take on the project. The cemetery was extremely
overgrown with vines, bushes and small trees. We quickly set out
to clear this dense underbrush. On our first "work day" we succeeded
in clearing most of the problem areas. We also were able to clean
the headstones, when we found that they were made of very
beautiful stone.
We scheduled additional "work days" to complete
the project, but it seemed the weather would nearly always be against
us. We would not give up, though, and within a few months we had
cleaned the cemetery and erected a chain link fence.
The
Tuten and Bouknight family was very generous with this project.
Their donations allowed us to meet all of the goals we set when
we started the project. Of special note here were Tommy and Ruth
Tuten of Wisconsin, Hugo and Eula Andressen of Vero Bch, FL, Lorena
Bussey of Ft Pierce, FL, and Roy and Judy Whitten of Micanopy, FL.
We plan to return to the site periodicly to make sure it stays in
it's "restful" condition. |
