C. A. Sheeley - North View Cemetery - Winters, TX, USA
N 31° 57.964 W 099° 57.797
14R E 408977 N 3537079
A Dove of Peace bearing an olive branch appears on the Woodmen of the World monument for Dr. Charles A. Sheeley, in North View Cemetery, Winters, TX.
Waymark Code: WM10HHQ
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 05/10/2019
Views: 1
His
Findagrave page provides his title, and there is also a
Ballinger Ledger clipping from when this monument was placed.
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 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, like this marble example, 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. A ribbon wraps around the trunk, above the emblem, noting that it was "Erected by the Woodmen of the World." Later emblems would show a simple tree stump instead, and the dove and the tools would be displayed somewhere on the monument.
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, noting that Dr. Sheeley belonged to Bois D'Arc Camp No. 3, over 250 miles away!
The family name, "Sheeley", is on the plinth, while the inscription scroll reads:
C.A. Sheeley
Born
Apr. 6, 1854,
Died
July 3, 1902
---
Gone but not forgot-
ten.
Bois D'Arc Camp No.
3, Greenville Tex.
[n.b. In Texas, they pronounce that camp as "Bow Dark".]