Batesville Magnolia Cemetery

Cypress C. Vance Rootes (1816-1881) gave the land before the Civil War for a public burial ground, and the earliest recorded grave dates to the 1840s. The cemetery is owned neither by the city nor privately: a volunteer board of directors governs and maintains it. More than 1,400 burials are unmarked, many of them victims of the 1878 yellow fever epidemic. Among the marked graves are Rev. J. W. Bates (1821-1900), for whom the town is named, and Governor Cliff Finch (1927-1986). The state marker went up in 2020, but the pandemic delayed its dedication until May 2021.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sardis Lake and Dam — 11 mi
  A flood-control lake on the Little Tallahatchie, built from 1930s labor and a dredge named Pontotoc, with a dam that for years was the largest earth-filled dam in the world.
• Enid Lake — 11 mi
  A Corps of Engineers lake on the Yocona River, finished in 1952 after farm families were moved off the valley floor, and the home water of a world-record white crappie.
• Casey Jones Railroad Museum — 21 mi
  The old Illinois Central depot in Water Valley, where Casey Jones worked in the 1890s, with a Mississippi Blues Trail marker for the songs written about his death in 1900.
• The Lyceum and the Circle, University of Mississippi — 24 mi
  The 1848 Greek Revival building at the center of the Ole Miss campus, where federal marshals held off a mob on 30 September 1962 and James Meredith registered the next morning.

More markers nearby

• Batesville — 0.8 mi
• St. Stephens Episcopal Church — 0.9 mi
• Dr. King Visits Batesville — 1.4 mi
• Macedonia Rosenwald School — 6.5 mi