Shrouded by 1,000 acres of pines, a farmer sleeps in red clay beside 16 tons of mule-hauled granite composing one of the most mysterious and grandiose burial monuments in rural America.
In 1901, L.D. Hutchinson spent a stunning $400,000 at modern currency rates to memorialize himself and protect the bones of his kin in a 10-acre family cemetery. Yet, the site soon was claimed by vines and brambles, and defiled by grave robbers and buckshot blasts.
Hutchinson’s enigmatic tale spotlights the steady desecration of rural graves—predominantly containing the remains of millions of American farmers. Past and present, in overgrown scrub and on forgotten hilltops, moonlight thieves have dug plots for rumored treasure, decorative buttons, gold teeth, watches, wedding rings, or the prize of prizes for the macabre—human skulls. Hovering on the periphery, Hutchinson’s ghost has watched it all.
Hints and Whispers
In extreme western Georgia, 10 miles east from the slow flow of the Chattahoochee River, Robert Wright walks a 28’-by-38’ oblong, along 3’-high walls built from 500 lb. granite blocks, with 600 lb. stone balls ensconced on each corner. He passes under an 8,000 lb. arch originally spanned by a wrought-iron gate, and once inside the 2.5’-thick walls, stares in bewilderment at the 30’-high peak of an 8,000 lb. obelisk perched on a sandwich of megaliths. The tapered obelisk sits on a 6,000 lb. block that rests over a third stone weighing 7,500 lb. The three pieces are positioned atop a fourth chunk of granite—a 12,000 lb. base, 8’ square. The four-piece leviathan is a declaration of grandeur.
“Unreal,” Wright exclaims. “An outrageous amount of cut granite out in the woods? It’s like stumbling on the lost ruins made of a forgotten civilization. Instead, we’re in the middle of nowhere Harris County, and this may be the wildest family cemetery outside the big cities in Georgia and any other state.”
Creator of Sidestep: Adventures Into History, a riveting YouTube channel exploring cemeteries, abandoned homesites, lost artifacts, farmland, and anything on the brink of disappearance, Wright has chronicled backroad burial sites across the Southeast—yet never seen anything to compare with Hutchinson’s graveyard creation.
“This place almost defies description,” Wright says. “The first question most people have is, ‘How in the hell did they get the stones out here?’ The second question is, ‘Why does someone build such a massive memorial to themselves in the middle of the woods?’”
Behind the veil, hints and whispers abound.
Layer Cake
According to lore, Lorenzo Dow (L.D.) Hutchinson was born to a poor farming family, sharing a supper table with seven hungry siblings. No published photo, painting, drawing, etching, or silhouette exists of Hutchinson across his lifespan, 1835 to 1901. However, records indicate he was dark-complected, dark-haired, hazel-eyed, and 5’10”—long-legged in an era when American males averaged 5’7”. Tall, dark, and possibly handsome.
A year past the start of the Civil War, as the 46th Regiment, Georgia Infantry was formed in spring 1862, Hutchison, 27, left his farm and signed up for the Confederate Army. The 46th saw a blitz of fighting at Secessionville, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, and Atlanta, and later action in Tennessee and North Carolina. The battles spilled farm boy blood, as did the entire Civil War—70% of Confederate soldiers were farmers, as were nearly 50% of Union soldiers.
In 1864, during or after the Battle of Atlanta, Hutchinson was captured in Georgia by Union troops under the command of William Tecumseh Sherman and imprisoned south of Chicago at Camp Douglas, a hellhole POW lockup where approximately 4,500 Confederate soldiers died of disease and overcrowding. (Two-thirds of the 660,000 soldier deaths in the Civil War were due to infectious disease.)
In June 1865, a month after Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox on April 9 and Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in D.C. on April 14, Hutchinson was released from Camp Douglas, among the last parolees of the war. Returning home, he wed Elizabeth Dennis in 1866, and despite the decimation of Georgia and the deracination of the Southern farm economy, the couple thrived—turning piecemeal acres into vast farmland and business holdings in Harris and Troup counties. Hutchinson could find a whisper in a whirlwind.
Within a decade, Hutchinson had acquired genuine wealth, Wright explains. “Georgia was in shambles after most of the big cities were burned, but L.D. Hutchinson must have been a shaker and mover because by the mid-1870s, he’d acquired thousands of acres and lots of businesses.”
Hutchinson took on the moniker of “Uncle Render” in society. “No one called him L.D. or Lorenzo,” Wright explains. “The reason for the Uncle Render nickname is lost, but that’s how he was referred to everywhere. He and his wife never had children, and maybe that’s part of how he focused on finances. Whatever the reason, he kept building wealth and land, eventually owning over 10,000 acres.”
Business boomed, according to a press clipping from the era: Mr. Hutchinson thinks every man that can plow ought to be a rich man. On one occasion he marketed 50 bales of cotton and got for them $7,500. This crop was made with five mules, which was an average of $1,500 to the mule. About this time he bought a barrel of flour for $18. This was the last flour he ever bought and he thinks that if all the farmers would raise their supplies, cotton would sell for double its present price. He remarked by the way that it would break any man in the world to hold his cotton, if he would hold it long enough.
On paper, Hutchinson had more assets than he could say grace over. But in 1896, the bliss ended. Elizabeth, 63, took ill, and Uncle Render popped a helluva layer cake into the oven.
Bitter Chaser
On Jan. 27, 1896, Hutchinson’s first wife, Elizabeth Dennis, died. Rest in peace; time to find new wife. Less than a month later, on Feb. 25, Hutchinson, 61, put a ring on the finger of Susan Piper, 34.
Hutchinson moved fast, in part because he was cheating time: Life expectancy for U.S. males born in 1835 was roughly 45 years. “The first wife’s death probably got Hutchinson to thinking about his own end,” Wright says. “In March, just weeks after he marries for a second time, he writes a will—and the story really begins for a second time.”
Boiled down, Hutchinson’s will directed everything to Susan. Everything. Forgoing blood siblings, nieces, and nephews, Hutchinson gave Susan, his wife of less than a month, the full Monty. However, Susan’s sweet inheritance came with a bitter chaser: Maintain widowhood or lose it all. Keep the veil; keep the money.
Additionally, he set the rules for his own planting via the purchase and design of a “marble or granite” monument, and wall enclosure for a minimum of $10,600—a conversion to $400,000 at current purchasing power. And if more money was needed, Hutchinson tossed in a blank check: “If that is not enough money to build it of that material, to use more out of my estate.”
The will directed burial construction at the family homestead in Harris County where Hutchinson’s father, mother, stepmother, and first wife were already interred, several miles outside Whitesville and 6 miles east of West Point. As a buffer, Hutchinson designated 10 “never to be sold” acres around the headstones “to be used for a graveyard, family, and a flower garden—and nothing else.”
The 10-acre cemetery-garden was intended for posterity, emphasizes Wright. “Normally, when you see rural family cemeteries, regardless of condition, you can’t be certain what the people buried there wanted,” Wright says. “Would they care that their cemetery is falling apart today? Would they want to just be left alone? Would they want their graves restored? Most of the time, you never find answers to those questions.”
“However, L.D. Hutchinson was clear,” Wright notes. “There’s certainly a huge amount of pride involved, whether in self or family, and there’s zero doubt he wanted an ongoing memorial for generations. If he knew what happened after his death, he’d roll in his grave.”
Call a Farmer
In 1901, Leon Czolgosz bought an Iver-Johnson .32 revolver for $4.50 and fired two rounds from the nickel-plated pistol into William McKinley’s abdomen, mortally wounding the 25th president. In 1901, J.P. Morgan pulled off the first billion-dollar business deal in history. In 1901, the first Tour de France race rolled. And, in 1901, L.D. “Uncle Render” Hutchinson, 66, died from heart trouble at his picturesque plantation home in Harris County, Georgia.
Yet to be adorned by tons of granite, he was buried alongside his first wife and parents, in the most expensive and heaviest casket of the day. As an ill-timed omen, when Hutchinson was lowered into the clay, a leather strap broke, slamming the coffin against a pallbearer’s legs, almost costing the man a limb. Literally, Hutchinson went to the grave with the pallbearer’s shoe.
With Hutchinson six feet under, it was time for the living to open the books. His estate was valued at $150,000—worth a whopping $44,213,590 in relative wealth in 2025. Uncle Render had stuck a finger in a stunning array of pies: mills, gins, commercial buildings, warehouses, bank stock, factory stock, investment shares, steam engine, and 10,000 acres of farmland spread over two counties.
“Hutchinson’s younger brother, William, was executor of the will,” Wright says. “Hutchinson’s second wife, Susan, got the house and 1,000 acres, and all the proceeds from the sale of everything else.”
“And as requested, an order was placed with Elledge & Norman Co. in Columbus, Ga., for a $10,000 monument to be erected with a derrick, and block and tackle,” Wright continues. “The newspapers were already covering his death and estate, and they went wild with stories about the costliest rural burial in state history.”
The money was only half the battle. “It was one thing to design the monument and prepare the giant stones,” Wright adds. “It was another to physically transport them from Columbus to the Hutchinson Cemetery without modern machinery or vehicles. Incredible job. That was deep, deep in the woods. Hell, even today, surrounded by 1,000 acres of pines, it’s still a long way out.”
How to transport enough stone to build a pyramid to the back of beyond? Call a farmer. Enter George Henry Myhand and his monster mules.
No Mas
The smaller stones were sent by rail to West Point, 6 miles west of Hutchinson’s home, where masons hand-chipped the finish. However, the two largest behemoths—the 12,000 lb. base and 8,000 lb. obelisk—posed a tricky problem, deemed too heavy to cross the Chattahoochee River bridge. Instead, the pair were moved by the Central Georgia Railroad to Chipley (present Pine Mountain), 16 miles distant from the Hutchinson Cemetery.
At 28 years young, George Myhand bit on a $1,200 contract to complete the final haul. Over 50 years later, Myhand, 83, described the herculean task to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1955.
Out of the gate, Myhand scouted the route requiring crossing of 8-10 creeks. He commissioned the Davis Wagon Co. in Columbus to build a specialized wagon with 2x4s as spokes, solely for the Hutchinson haul. (Davis Wagon Co. built the special order at no charge, later using it as an advertising showpiece.) Myhand cut two large pines to serve as bed walls to secure the base and obelisk.
Following harvest in 1902, with roads in dry fall condition, Myhand bought 8 draft mules, each at least 1,200 lb., and hired 23 men for the project. “Myhand drove from the wagon seat, but two fieldhands helped drive from saddles on the mule team,” Wright describes. “Two more manned a separate wagon filled with tools and timbers to shore up bridges along the way.”
“They braced every bridge, and then after crossing, took out the supports and moved to the next one. Hilltops were brutal. Myhand locked brakes going downhill on the hard red clay, and he had a small boy riding alongside to pour water on the clay to help unlock the brakes as needed. It took almost two days to go the 16 miles. The trip toting granite into the woods, by itself, is a phenomenal part of this story.”
After assembly of the monument and erection of the wall stacked with 500 lb. blocks, five graves were protected within: Hutchinson; his wife, Elizabeth; his parents; and his stepmother. There was also an engraving for the presumed future arrival of his second wife, Susan. And all surrounded by 10 acres to accommodate the incoming bodies of successive generations. However, the vacancy was permanent. No mas.
“That’s it,” Wright says. “In 1904 and 1906, a niece and nephew are buried within the wall, and then the cemetery is never touched by family again—ever. Hutchinson’s line ends at his headstone. No kids and no family that want to join him.”
“Curiously enough, like so many parts of this story, there is a newspaper mention of an adopted child,” Wright details. “One reference and no more. The adopted child, if that person existed, disappears from history. Hutchinson’s second wife, Susan, moves to Florida within a few short years, leaving her husband in his memorial garden.”
There Hutchinson stayed, beside a monument planned by himself, in a shrine of his own creation, paid for with what many would consider a fortune, with space for his relatives for the next century and beyond.
In the absence of family, his next visitors were bone collectors.
Bad to Worse
A proverbial pot of coin beneath a rich man’s head, i.e., Hutchinson was buried with a cache of money—so swirled a falsehood. And likely within a decade or less, to find a treasure that didn’t exist, grave diggers attempted to stir Hutchinson’s bones.
The first documented break-in occurred in the early 1920s. “It’s possibly much earlier, but we know for sure in the 1920s, at night, someone pried off the top of his tomb and couldn’t get in,” Wright notes. “Then they dug sideways, but hit brick and rock, and were stopped again.”
In tandem, Hutchinson’s brother and will executor, William, died in 1923, with a heavy dose of contrast. William’s interment wishes were ironic and possibly telltale, Wright contends: “Like the rest of Hutchinson’s relatives, William wanted to be buried elsewhere, and in his own will, he basically says, ‘I just want to be buried in a Christian-like manner in something that matches my means.’ Is that a reference to the extravagance of Hutchinson? Could be, could be not, but there are totally opposite outlooks between the brothers.”
A mere 20 years after Hutchinson’s death, his monument and memorial garden morphed from isolated to neglected to abandoned to ruined. Break-ins continued as the decades passed. Tree roots and scrub scaled the granite walls. Headstones toppled. Slabs cracked. Bones exhumed. Property looted.
In 1959, writer Tom Sellers from the Ledger-Enquirer visited Hutchinson Cemetery: I was surprised to see a marble obelisk piercing the sky above a thicket of second-growth pines... All around the old graveyard was a virtual wasteland; the plot itself was grown up in scrub oaks, persimmon, dogwood, mulberry bushes and brambles.
Being there gave me an eerie feeling, like finding the tombs of some lost civilization in a Central American jungle.
The marble spire in the center of the graveyard stood at least 30 feet tall... in size and grandeur it would outstrip many a war monument... but here it was, hidden from view on a dirt road where hardly anyone would ever come...
Bad to worse, even heavier desecration occurred in the 1970s, documented by press clippings. Grave robbers smashed the marble slave over Elizabeth Dennis Hutchinson’s grave, busted the tomb below, pulled out the coffin remains including glass viewing window, and stole whatever accoutrements she was buried with.
“They took her jewelry and her skull,” Wright says. “They took it all. Some of her bones wound up stacked on the granite wall and left behind for animals or time. But there wasn’t anything unique about her grave destruction—the entire family was essentially dug up in varying degrees except Hutchinson, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. He was covered by too much brick and concrete and turned out to be inaccessible. Ironic that basically everyone else’s grave was turned over by thieves trying to get to him.”
Contemporaries of Hutchinson never made attempts at cemetery restoration. “Every year that went by, even as late as around 1970, there were people around that knew L.D. Hutchinson. I’m not pointing fingers; just stating facts to take or leave,” Wright says. “Nobody—either friends or family, fixed the cemetery or even just the headstones. Was Hutchinson that hated? Was he that detested? Human bones of his family left around for decades? Open graves for 50-plus years? Blows my mind.”
And into the 1980s and beyond, with Hutchinson’s giant monument ground littered with Budweiser cans and Old Crow bottles, his defilement was complete: The domain of debauchery, drinking, pissing, and graverobbing.
Enough. Robert Wright had seen enough.
Restoration
Via Adventures Into History and now backed by a 501c3, HCx Preservation, Wright has rediscovered, cleaned, restored, and documented scores of rural cemetery sites otherwise lost to time. (In 2023, Wright’s 501c3 restored the Mahone Cemetery in Harris County, another highly significant site.)
Although blessed with a storyteller’s descriptive craft, Wright is a man of action. “It’s the effort to raise awareness and protect as best we can, and it’s a responsibility we should all share no matter what state we live in. Why? Because we’re saving the stories of who we are. There are untold numbers of abandoned cemeteries and people know where they are, but they drive on, even knowing their own kin are in those graves.”
“There’s no special formula to save a site, but at the very, very least we can put it on the permanent historical record; ensure who owns the land; get a 501c3 involved; raise awareness for the next generation; and keep eyeballs on the site. People usually get interested in their history too late in life and we’re all guilty of that, but it’s never too late to start preservation. Yes, it’s a shame about what we’ve all allowed to fade away, but now is the time to step in and preserve.”
With the blessing of Hutchinson’s descendants, Wright, alongside frequent backroads crony, Cecil Young, began by pulling over a century of overgrowth at the Hutchinson Cemetery and removing decades of cans, bottles, and candles. They reassembled grave sites, epoxied shattered headstones, and returned glass and coffin wood to the depths. Reburial.
“We simply do our best, just like we do at any cemetery. I’m blessed to do this beside an incredible guy like Cecil Young who works a full shift at a regular job, and then puts in tremendous effort to salvage the past. And then all the background history dug up by Joy Kersey Fisher was invaluable to find Hutchinson’s paper trail. Again, she did it all like Cecil for no financial gain. Just respect for those who came before.”
Once a week for several months, Wright and Young mixed concrete by hand for new grave foundations and shifted Hutchinson’s outrageously heavy stones. “The graves are now a mix where the scarred original stonework is shown and the new concrete also visible. Hutchinson’s grave got a new foundation and leveling. No matter what repairs we do, there’s no way to get rid of the scars. For example, there’s no way to get rid of the scouring from shotgun blasts.”
Restoration complete. Yet, so many forgotten sites still to preserve—all packed with the bones of American farmers.
Bones and Stones
It doesn’t matter the locale or region, cemeteries beyond the city are farmer haunts.
Spot a small burial site off a county road—a half-acre of jutting headstones colored seven shades of gray peeking over on a hilltop. Who are they?
“Farmers or agriculture-related people,” Wright answers. “All of them. Even business owners in old cemeteries were also farmers. No matter how you cut it, everyone inside the cemetery had direct relations to a farm. That’s just who they were as Americans.”
Thus, farmers often are the target of modern grave robbers—a violation frequently witnessed by Wright. “People in farm country often think of Indian mounds getting dug up, but that’s not the whole story. Right now, old farmer graves get looted for jewelry and bones. Literally, people steal skulls and sell them online. Plenty of websites deliver ‘ethically sourced’ human remains to your door. It’s a total shame and a sign of how people drift from their moorings when they lose touch with their past. Agriculture is unfortunately a big area where so many pieces of American history have been lost.”
In the vein of “lost,” L.D. Hutchinson still holds his secrets. His second wife and inheritor of his financial gain, Susan Piper, never bore any children and never remarried. On July 25, 1930, she died at 68, and was entombed in Montgomery, Ala., under a simple concrete marker. Her burial, 80 miles southwest of her husband, was the final severing of ties—arguably the death knell of the magnificent Hutchinson Cemetery.
“When nobody wants to be buried in a cemetery and the place goes silent, particularly one as incredible as Hutchinson’s, there’s a reason,” Wright concludes. “Was his family outraged that he spent so much money on his monument and then left the rest of his fortune to his second wife in a will only weeks after marrying her? Tradition says he was detested by some. Maybe, maybe not. Had he done something in society viewed as abominable? Maybe, maybe not.”
“One of the biggest clues is noting how fast the site went to ruin, and then realizing that those who knew him watched it happen. I’m not going to sugarcoat or pass judgement because there will always be speculation and echoes. Every cemetery, especially this one, has its skeletons.”
Bones, stones, and the secrets of men.
For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:
Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told
Cottonmouth Farmer: The Insane Tale of a Buck-Wild Scheme to Corner the Snake Venom Market
