When I was younger, summers off from school often meant helping Grandma Doris and her sisters, Aunt Diccie and Aunt Melba, take care of the family cemeteries. Aunt Diccie would drive up into Gran’s driveway. We would load Gran’s push lawnmower and hoes in the back of Aunt Diccie’s 1950s Chevrolet truck and head to High Bridge Cemetery. Aunt Diccie and I (and some of the other cousins) would mow while Gran and Aunt Melba used their hoes to trim around the tombstones (this was before weed-eaters became common).
While mowing at High Bridge Cemetery, I noticed a tombstone unlike others in the cemetery. It had a special carving with letters that appeared to be G B H surrounding crossed spears over a cross with an arc above the cross. I asked about the person buried there, Silas G. Toler. He was born 9 September 1883 and died 13 October 1914, and he was a brother of my great-grandfather, Joshua Allen Toler. He died before Gran and her sisters were born, so that was about all anyone knew about him. Each time I went to the cemetery, I would always wonder what the symbol meant.
Once when talking to Gran about things in the past, she mentioned that several of the men in the neighborhood were members of a group called the Brotherhood, but that was about all she could remember. One day while researching newspapers, I found an article about a fraternal organization formed in Beaufort County called the Charitable Brotherhood. The organization grew to several thousand members in most of Eastern North Carolina. I decided this must be the Brotherhood group that Gran remembered.
One day, while looking at the tombstone of Silas G. Toler, I noticed that what I thought was a G was actually a C….C B H…Charitable Brother Hood. The symbol was for the Charitable Brotherhood, of which Silas evidently was a member. So if you see a tombstone in a cemetery with a symbol you do not recognize, research to find out what it may be. The person buried there may have belonged to some organization and that organization (if it still exists) may have records that mention that person. Another source of information for the life lived between the two dates listed on the tombstone.