Renie Duncan helps clean up the Neff Cemetery. (Submitted photo)

By Will Chavez

Staff Writer

 

WEBBERS FALLS, Okla. – For years, one Cherokee family has traveled from California to Webbers Falls to revive memories of living here and to check on graves of ancestors buried in what used to be the Gritts Community. 

 

Walsie Clymore, 85, of Bakersfield Calif., and Renie Duncan, 61, of La Habra, Calif., returned in early October to clean the family cemetery that had been neglected for so long.

 

Before their return, Cherokee Nation Natural Resources staff located the cemetery, removed decades worth of trees and brush and marked the graves.

 

“Renie and I have been working on this four or five years. With the help of the Cherokee Nation we were able to go back. I feel like I have accomplished what my mother tried to accomplish for so many years,” Clymore said. 

 

The first burial in Neff Cemetery was in 1890, and while the women believed there were only nine graves in the cemetery, a search for graves using ground-penetrating radar showed 11 graves. The women said they do not know who the other two graves may belong to, but they plan to mark them with markers that read Unknown Neff. 

 

Clymore’s grandfather William Neff is the only adult buried in the cemetery. Born in 1866 in Webbers Falls, he married Mattie Ross, a descendent of Cherokee Chief Oconostota, in 1887 and they had 11 children.

 

Three of the Neff children are buried in the cemetery. The first child, a baby, was buried in the cemetery in 1890, while another baby was buried in 1900. The third, a daughter who died when she was nearly 2, was buried there in 1914. The eight surviving Neff children are listed on the Dawes Roll. 

 

Along with William Neff, who died in Gritts in 1925, and his three children, five of his grandchildren are buried in the cemetery.

 

Renie, short for Irene, is named after her aunt Irene Duncan, who died at age 11 in November 1927 or 1928 and was the last person buried in the cemetery. Clymore said she was only 4 or 5 when the family buried Irene.

 

“Irene was three years older than my dad,” Duncan said. “He said she always put him on her hip and carried him around. She died around Christmas time and even until he died Christmas was always sad for him.”

 

As a child, Renie’s father, Sequoyah, brought her back to Webbers Falls every year to visit the cemetery. She said he would spend some “quiet time” in the cemetery and reminisce about family.

 

Duncan said she had hoped to find the grave of her namesake aunt, but wasn’t able to because some of the cement markers that Clymore’s mother Arizona and aunt America had placed on the graves some 60 years ago are missing.

 

“My dad always wanted to move back, but then all us kids were born in California and our mom was a Californian, so he never moved back. But this was our vacation every year,” she said.

 

Clymore said she wasn’t able to visit the cemetery every year when she was younger because her husband was in Army during World II and they lived throughout the country.

 

In 1934, Mattie Neff, her parents Jesse and Missouri Ross and her children moved to Bakersfield Calif., to find work. They were a part of the migration of Oklahomans who moved west to find jobs during the Great Depression. Mattie died in Bakersfield in 1947.

 

The Neff Cemetery, which sits about two miles from the nearest road, was never forgotten. In 2007, hunters found the cemetery, and when the family recently inquired about it, people in the area gave them directions.

 

Clymore said she carries a book containing research on her family when they lived in the Webbers Falls area. In the book are photos of her grandparents William and Mattie and a list of those buried in the cemetery.

 

Clymore and Duncan returned to California Oct. 14, but they were able to help their Oklahoma cousins – Jerry and Barbara Clouse of Muskogee – erect a fence around the cemetery. The Clouses continue to work on the cemetery and plan to install a gate on the fence and mark the graves again with crosses. Barbara is a great-granddaughter of William and Mattie Neff.

 

The family also cleared trees and saplings and mowed the weeds around the cemetery to make a small parking area for visitors.

 

“Next, we’d like to plant the wild pink roses Walsie and Renie brought from California, which are cuttings from the original rose bushes that Grandma Neff took with her when they all left in 1934,” Barbara said.

 

The CN council gave the family $500 from a cemetery restoration fund to buy fencing and other items for the cemetery. The family also purchased a monument engraved with the names of the people buried in the cemetery and plan to dedicate it next spring when Duncan and Clymore return to Oklahoma.

 

They hope to have traditional Cherokee prayers recited to dedicate the granite monument. Clymore said with the help of Cherokee linguist Dennis Sixkiller the family was able to inscribe on the stone in Cherokee: “Always loved, never forgotten.”

 

“This is an emotional thing for us. My dad and family always wanted to take care of this place. We are trying to finish their wishes,” Duncan said.