Mt. Auburn Church Cemetery
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Mt. Auburn Church Cemetery is one of the most sacred and central places in the later Wally Atkins family story.
In A Long Time Ago: A History of the Atkins-Paynter and Allied Families, several members of the Mecklenburg branch were first buried at the old Atkins homeplace and later reinterred at Mt. Auburn following the creation of Buggs Island Lake (Kerr Reservoir) by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the early 1950s. Because of that, Mt. Auburn is not only a cemetery; it is a landscape where memory, displacement, loss, and ancestral continuity converge.
Cemetery Location
Mt. Auburn Christian Church and Cemetery is located in southern Mecklenburg County, Virginia, near Palmer Springs, just north of the North Carolina border and east of Nutbush Creek:
Family Burials & Memorials
The following ancestors and family members are recorded at Mt. Auburn Cemetery:
| Name | Lifespan | Status / Evidence | Relationships | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Patrick Henry Atkins | 1837–1908 | Confirmed: Primary Source | Son of Benjamin Atkins & Dosha Lawson; Husband of Paulina Sue Lawson | Confederate veteran; reinterred from homeplace |
| Paulina Sue Lawson | 1838–1915 | Confirmed: Primary Source | Daughter of Dosha Lawson; Wife of Patrick Henry Atkins | Matriarch; reinterred from homeplace |
| Dosha Lawson | ca. 1805–aft. 1880 | Secondary Source | Mother of Paulina Sue Lawson; Partner of Benjamin Atkins | Central Mecklenburg ancestral bridge |
Reinterred Family Lineage
Historical Significance
For the family, Mt. Auburn is one of the most tangible physical links between the written narratives in A Long Time Ago and the geographic ground where those lives unfolded. The stones stand as quiet testaments to generations that worked the tobacco fields, timber mills, and river valleys of the Roanoke and Nutbush basins before the modern reservoir altered the topography forever.