Forrest, my son, and I took a hike Saturday at Malmaison. Last year, I was running that area on Fridays and one day I parked at the very place we parked. Only then I ran the gravel roads while today we hiked the Leflore Trail and tried to find Greenwood Leflore's grave. Before we left, Paul cooked us delicious breakfast of homemade biscuits, tomato gravy, and bacon. I ate a bunch and then we left Forrest's a little before 9:00 am.
Neither one of us had ever been on that trail so we had a spirit of adventure was high as we left the truck and started walking in the warm but not hot October air. The woods were surprisingly wet, drippy wet, having rained the day before. Not too far in, maybe a half mile, we crossed a wood foot-bridge over a dry creek and entered a side trail which was not well marked and had obviously not been maintained in years. There were signs the trees had grown around and almost covered up with their bark. In spots, kudzo had crept over the trail totally obscuring the way and being nigh near impassable in places. Steps going up and down steep hills were rotten and the hand rails were surprisingly shaky.
After we crossed a second bridge, we encountered a cemetery the forest had reclaimed. The burial dates were from the 1890s to 1950. Some of the graves were in the bottom along the creek. We wondered around and found graves all over the place. Besides being in the bottom, they were on the ridges and we even found row after row of sunken spots where people had obviously been buried but no tombstones marked the spot. Slave graves? I know not, but from what I have read, Leflore owned over 400 Africans who worked his vast plantation.
We did not find Greenwood's burial spot.
We plan to go back and search some more.
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