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Submitted: 1/26/22 • Approved: 1/26/22 • Last Updated: 2/3/22 • R1415491-G0-S3
*Gravel Hill Memorial Gardens
(Hite Cemetery)
Gravel Hill, Arkansas
List updated August 16, 2009
Legal description: SE, SE, SE, Sect.8, T7N, R9W
Earliest listed grave: 1967
Last listed grave: Active
Arkansas Archeological Survey site #: 3WH0711
This cemetery is located west of Gravel Hill Road and just north of Mockingbird Road. Take Gravel Hill Road from Highway 36 at Joy and go 4.6 miles to Mockingbird. It was started in the early 1960s, according to Bill Leach of the White County Historical Society, when a storekeeper named Hite at Gravel Hill gave an acre to the community for a cemetery.
Gerald Torrence of Judsonia, who updated several cemeteries for the Historical Society during 2000, noticed the cemetery while driving in the area in July 2000. He stopped and copied the information from stones that he saw. On October 24, 2000, Leroy Blair of the Historical Society found the cemetery "in bad need of mowing." He noted that "the graves of all of the Hites are about 100 feet south of all the other graves."
Hite’s Store was on the southwest corner of Gravel Hill Road and Romance Road. Leach, who like his parents was a president of the Historical Society, recalls, "Dad visited with Mr. Hite some (I remember going into his store and getting a Coke whenever we went to Gravel Hill in the late 1950s). He was good-natured and community minded. I guess he thought the community simply needed a cemetery on the main road. Quattlebaum Cemetery was very difficult to get to … due to extremely poor road conditions."
Leach noted that there are at least three cemeteries in the Gravel Hill community – Hite, Gray and Quattlebaum. Gravel Hill is in the Joy Fire Department zone and the north end of the community trades at Joy but the south end is more likely to go to Floyd for trade. He remembered that Gravel Hill had two stores, a garage and two churches in the 1960s. Bethel Freewill Baptist was the only church remaining in 2000 but the area was growing – from approximately 40 registered voters in 1970 to some 200 today.
If you have additional information on this cemetery, contact the White County Historical Society, P.O. Box 537, Searcy, AR 72145.
www.ancestry.com
--photo by Gerald Torrence, 2000
Contributed on 1/26/22 by hawkinsdonna48
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Record #: 1415491