Tucked away behind the First Baptist Church of McNeill is the McNeill Cemetery, two acres of land that holds the key to more than 100 years of history.

“There is a lot of history in the McNeill Cemetery as there is at most cemeteries,” said McNeill Cemetery Association President Jack Spiers.

The cemetery, which has no affiliation with the church, began after Spiers’ great-great grandparents John and Lourana Spiers donated part of their land in the late 1880s for a community cemetery, he said.

Jack Spiers said the couple had nine sons and two daughters. All of their sons fought in the Civil War for the confederacy, along with their son-in-law and grandson.

The number of Spiers family members that fought in the war is representative of many families in the area at that time, Jack Spiers said.

John Spiers’ son-in-law died of an illness during the war and his son Orvil died during the siege of Vicksburg. Another son died of chickenpox at a confederate hospital in Jackson during the war, Jack Spiers said.

Both John Spiers and his wife and their sons are buried in the McNeill Cemetery, Jack Spiers said.

John Spiers’ headstone, which states he was born in 1799 and died in 1889, is the oldest marker at the cemetery, said McNeill Cemetery Association Secretary Matty Jo Fox.

Fox said she and another board member started compiling a record of the graves in the cemetery about 10 years ago. She said it took weeks to compile all of the information on the graves. Fox said those records are now invaluable because some of the graves are illegible now due to deterioration. Jack Spiers now keeps up with the records and adds new information as the association receives it.

He said when they first started compiling the records there were about 60 unmarked graves. Over the years, the association has been able to identify about 30 of those unmarked graves through extensive research and detective work.

Preserving the records and keeping them up to date is a daily task, Jack Spiers said, but preserving the memory of the people buried in the cemetery is what motivates him and the rest of the association.

“It’s not work to us because we are just constantly trying to identify people because we think they should be identified,” Jack Spiers said.

The cemetery association not only keeps records of the people buried there, they also maintain the property. The association is able to pay for that maintenance through donations from families who have loved ones resting in the cemetery, Fox said.

She said no donation is ever too small and they are grateful for each one they receive.

“This is such a place of honor for our predecessors and it’s a part of us and we’re connected,” Jack Spiers said.