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Post by Angela on Aug 26, 2009 6:01:09 GMT -5
Browder Cemetery, the final resting place for the Lawson family, conducted it's first burial one hundred and one years ago today when it received the tiny body of a little boy whose name was Laurie Browder. Laurie was the son of W.D. Browder and Ann Westmoreland Browder, owners of what would later become the best known cemetery in all of Stokes County. On that terribly sad day the body of their baby boy was laid to rest in a lonely plot of land tucked deep into the woods of that southern rural community. He would rest there alone for months until the next young child of the Browder family, his sister Barbara was laid next to him in 1909. Eleven years later the cemetery in which he lay would become the most famous and most visited cemetery in all of Stokes County when Charlie Lawson and the wife and six children he murdered were laid to rest just a few yards beyond him. Browder Cemetery is still a loney, sad and hard to find cemetery all these years later. And it is still the most visited cemetery in Stokes County.
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Post by sissy on Aug 26, 2009 7:17:38 GMT -5
It's always sad when anyone dies, but especially a child. Wow wasn't aware it had been around 100 years. I need to get up there to see it. It just looks so sad in the pictures, but also so peaceful. I still don't think they should have buried Charlie in the same grave with the rest of the family. They should have dumped his butt somewhere, and let the buzzards have him.
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Post by Angela on Aug 26, 2009 7:27:02 GMT -5
LOL Sissy. I doubt however that even the buzzards would want him!!! And you're right, it is a sad yet peaceful looking cemetery. It's definitely a place where a lot of tears have been shed over these past 101 years. It is also a place where a whole lot of anger has been let loose into the atmosphere there. I don't even have to say who that anger has been directed towards or why, we ALL know. Maria
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Post by angel71242 on Aug 26, 2009 9:03:37 GMT -5
Oh Man, that is so sad to think about that little boy buried all by himself out in the woods. And then months later joined by his sister.
I also didn't realize that Browder Cemetery was 101 years old! Wow!!!
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Post by Angela on Aug 26, 2009 10:56:28 GMT -5
101 years ago Charlie Lawson and Fannie Manring were alive and well. Charlie was 22 years old and still living in Lawsonville. Fannie was 16 and also living in Lawsonville. They were 4 years away from marrying each other. Like all other young girls her age, Fannie had her hopes and dreams I'm sure. Being murdered by her husband and giving birth to 8 children only to have 6 of them gunned down and bludgeoned to death was not a part of those dreams. If only there had been a way to warn her of the danger of marrying Charlie Lawson. I'm reminded of a line in the song Kay sa ra sa ra which goes: Kay sa ra sa ra, whatever will be will be, the future's not ours to see...Kay sa ra sa ra.
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Post by Angela on Aug 27, 2009 6:10:41 GMT -5
In the song Que sera sera....what do the words "What ever will be will be" mean to you?
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Post by debbie on Aug 27, 2009 6:41:59 GMT -5
I think it means, don't worry about the future because we can't change it.
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Post by angel71242 on Aug 27, 2009 7:49:09 GMT -5
Yeah..whatever's gonna happen is gonna happen no matter what you do. So try not to worry about it!
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Post by Angela on Aug 27, 2009 8:53:49 GMT -5
When Elsie Kiger said "It was meant for that whole family (Lawson family) to be destroyed", is that what she meant? That everything that happens does so because it was meant to? Is that the same as Predestined? Does that mean that if it was not meant for Charlie Lawson to kill himself and his family that someone would have stepped in and prevented it from happening? And last but not least...who, or what, decides what is to happen and when it is to happen?
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Post by debbie on Aug 27, 2009 9:18:40 GMT -5
I think our destiny depends on 3 things in life that for the most part is determined, Fate, Accident, Or Free Will. I believe that the tragedy with the Lawson's was fate but Charlie acted on his own free will to murder his family and as we know it certainly wasn't an accident, and no-one could have prevented it from happening.
According to the New Testament, some are predestined for salvation and some are not. Predestination is about our final destination, not every thing we do. Romans 8:27-30 says we are predestined. Ephesians 1: 4-11 says God chose & predestined in accordance with his will. Ephesians 2: 1-10 says "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast." (Free-will is works)
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Post by angel71242 on Aug 27, 2009 9:29:23 GMT -5
Those are hard questions. I feel like God has a general plan for each of us, but we can also sway that plan a little by the way we live and the things we do. God gave us free will. Could someone have stopped it, was it predestined - I don't know. Who decides what or when something is going to happen - that's hard to say too, like I said I believe God has a general plan for each of us, but our free will plays into it also.
Tough questions!!!!
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Post by Angela on Aug 27, 2009 10:23:26 GMT -5
Gotta love those "tough questions". It's a shame that more tough questions weren't asked by the Sheriff when the murders were fresh. If some in-depth questioning had been asked and a more in-depth investigation had been conducted right after this happened we might not be in the dark as much as we are 80 years later.
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Post by Brian on Aug 27, 2009 13:07:33 GMT -5
I think what Elsie Kiger made that statement concerning Arthur's death. Meaning, I think, that Arthur had somehow escaped when the family was slaughtered, but it finally caught up to him and he died because "it was meant" for family to be destroyed. But I don't believe it was God's will. God does have a plan for each of us, but we do have the free will to do as we please (and we usually do).
But since Arthur had children already, the family wasn't really destroyed. Charlie's line continues on.
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Post by Angela on Aug 27, 2009 13:23:26 GMT -5
Good points Brian. Thanks. I think Elsie was referring to Chalie, his wife, and his seven children when she said "that whole family".
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Post by Brian on Aug 27, 2009 13:32:10 GMT -5
I assume she meant all of them. But they weren't all destoryed until Arthur died.
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