Our Tuten/Bouknight Cemetery project began in 1998 and was finished in 1999. This small, family cemetery is located near Micanopy and contains the remains of Patrick Howell Tuten(7/12/1830-7/5/1864). Mr. Tuten was a Private in Co. F, 2nd Florida Cavalry. He died of Typhoid Fever.
This cemetery had been unattended for many years due to the fact that many of the family members lived out of state and were unable to care for it. Our organization became aware of the situation in 1998 and decided to take on the project. The cemetery was extremely overgrown with vines, bushes and small trees. We quickly set out to clear this dense underbrush. On our first "work day" we succeeded in clearing most of the problem areas. We also were able to clean the headstones, when we found that they were made of very beautiful stone.
We scheduled additional "work days" to complete the project, but it seemed the weather would nearly always be against us. We would not give up, though, and within a few months we had cleaned the cemetery and erected a chain link fence.
The Tuten and Bouknight family was very generous with this project. Their donations allowed us to meet all of the goals we set when we started the project. Of special note here were Tommy and Ruth Tuten of Wisconsin, Hugo and Eula Andressen of Vero Bch, FL, Lorena Bussey of Ft Pierce, FL, and Roy and Judy Whitten of Micanopy, FL.
We plan to return to the site periodicly to make sure it stays in it's "restful" condition. |
