Vernal Massey - Leagueville Cemetery - Leagueville, TX, USA
N 32° 13.889 W 095° 39.387
15S E 249677 N 3569191
A Dove of Peace bearing an olive branch appears on the Woodmen of the World monument for Vernal Massey in historic Leagueville Cemetery, Leagueville, TX.
Waymark Code: WM10GP7
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 05/05/2019
Views: 2
The Woodmen of the World are known today as WoodmenLife, a fraternal society that provides insurance to its members. Visitors to older cemeteries can frequently spot the tree trunk monuments that they placed at the graves of their members, although not every tree trunk monument out there was placed by the Woodmen of the World: It was common in the late 19th century to use a log to note that a person had died young, and many infants have such grave markers. Eventually, those marble tree trunk monuments became too expensive to produce, and headstones would be marked with a Woodmen of the World emblem of some kind. Earlier ones featured a dove of peace with an olive branch in its beak, flying over a fallen log where the tools of the woodmen's trade -- hatchet, mallet, and wedge -- can be seen, and "Dum Tacet Clamat" -- "Though silent, he speaks" -- is at the bottom of the emblem. Later ones would show a simple tree stump instead, and the dove, tools and any related text would typically be displayed somewhere on the monument; in this case, there are no tools, and the family name, "Massey", is near the bottom of the trunk. The dove of peace perches upon an inscription plate which reads:
Vernal Massey
Feb. 12, 1854
May 6, 1913
Camp No. 1271
He is at rest
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The Woodmen of the World organized themselves into local "camps", and this is a fairly common example of a monument that references the camp to which the person belonged. Camp 1271 was the Leagueville Camp, who spoke very highly of him in his June 6 obituary from the Athens Review.