By Carl Keith Greene / Staff Writer
London’s cemetery, A.R. Dyche Memorial Park, will see a new milestone Sunday as a lighted flagpole, street lighting and the illumination of the angelic memorial to Nannie Parker, the first person buried in the cemetery, are dedicated.
The event will be held at 2:30 p.m. The public is invited.
The cemetery was established by the young Miss Parker’s family at her death on Dec. 10, 1896, 20 days short of her 16th birthday.
Eventually, the Parker family opened it as a burial area for others.
The Parkers sold it to the Jackson family in 1902. The London Masonic Temple Co. bought the cemetery in 1920 and operated it until 1927 when the Masons hit some financial problems.
The Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the London Commercial Club began to suggest that the city buy the cemetery and operate it as a municipal facility.
Russell Dyche, publisher of “The Sentinel-Echo,” bought the land, and in 1935, turned it over to the city with the request that it become a memorial to his father, A.R. Dyche, publisher of the “Mountain Echo,” the “Sentinel’s” precursor.
The cemetery holds the remains of London and Laurel County’s rich and poor, famous and unknown, powerful and powerless.
In it are buried four of the five congressmen, D.C. Edwards, Vincent Boreing, William Lewis and Finley Hamilton, who came from London. The earliest congressman, William Randall, is buried atop East First Street in his family plot.
London’s first mayor, E.A. Pollard, is buried just inside the gates of the cemetery.
Also in the cemetery is a plot that made Ripley’s Believe it or Not.
E.H. Johnson and his first two wives are buried there.
The stone for his first wife, Sarah, who lived from 1874 to 1906, bears the epitaph, “Sarah, wife of E.H. Johnson. No better woman ever lived.”
Along side her lays Molly, who lived from 1878 to 1817. Her stone is identical to Sarah’s and bears the epitaph, “Molly R., wife of E.H. Johnson. No better woman ever lived.”
