A Brief Histroy of the Kaigler Davis Cemetery

Their children were John, George, Caroline (Mrs. J. Archie Wolf), Marie (Mrs. Benjamin Plant), Harriet (Mrs. Jacob Haugobook), and Henrietta (Mrs. Jacob Diedrick Hane). Henrietta and her family lived here with her parents at “The Old Place”. They lost an infant son, Nicolas, December 28, 1830, age 3 weeks and the little fellow was buried in the landscaped flower garden in front of the house. This was the beginning of the cemetery. Family legend says that Henrietta died of fright when her husband dropped a dead snake in her lap as a joke on October 12, 1831. She was buried beside her son, Nicolas. George Kaigler I and wife, Elizabeth Geiger Kaigler, were also buried in the garden.

Their son, George Kaigler II, (1803-1887) married Catherine Kinsler (1815-1905) and in 1842 moved away from “The Old Place” to a newly built home one mile away, known as "Pineland Park". Here were born their children: Sarah Elizabeth (Mrs. John Kinsler Davis), John William Kaigler, George Edward Ellison Kaigler, and Henry Asbury Gamewell Kaigler. All three of the little boys died young and were buried in the garden. Sarah Elizabeth was their only surviving child. After graduating from the Columbia Female College in 1861, she married her third cousin, John Kinsler Davis in 1862 while he was on leave from the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.No one was living at “The Old Place” when Sherman's Army marched up the State Road on February 16, 1865 and burned the house to the ground among many acts of vandalism committed in Sandy Run the day before they burned Columbia.

After the Confederate War, John Kinsler Davis returned and lived with his in-laws, George and Catherine Kaigler. The Davis' reared a large family: Catherine Kinsler Davis (Mrs. T. M. Nelson), Thomas Root Davis, Ellen Kinsler Davis (Mrs. J.B.W. Beckham), George Kaigler Davis, John Kinsler Davis, William Kinsler Davis, Edward Holmes Davis, Carolus Frost Davis, and Caroline Elizabeth Davis (Mrs. J. S. Bellinger).

Mrs. John Kinsler Davis (Ne' Sallie Kaigler) loved the hallowed spot dearly and has passed this legacy of love and respect down to her many descendents. She had erected the horizontal tombs and wrote the inscription and erected the wrought iron fence around the Cemetery. She buried her father, Col. George Kaigler in 1887 and her aged mother in 1905 in their ancestral garden spot.

The Davis name became associated with the old Kaigler Cemetery when Sallie Kaigler Davis' many descendents were buried there. Sallie Kaigler Davis was buried in 1912 and her husband John Kinsler Davis in 1908. She directed “that my family graveyard be ever kept sacred and inviolate” and “to keep the same in proper condition.

”“The Old Place” sat on a parcel of land approximately sixty acres in size. This particular tract was one of the tracts that Sallie bequeathed to the late William Kinsler Davis’ (1872-1916) only child, Mary Holmes Davis (Mrs. Cecil Powers) (1915-1999). In September of 1949 Mary Holmes Davis Powers instructed for approximately three acres to be delineated from the sixty-acre tract and given to the Kaigler-Davis Cemetery Association. On September 22, 1950, her first cousins, George Kaigler Nelson, William Kinsler Beckham, George Kinsler Bellinger Sr., George Bellinger Davis Sr. and Meynelle Davis had the Kaigler-Davis Cemetery Association certified incorporated by the South Carolina’s Secretary of State. It appears that Mary Holmes’ plat of the cemetery was never recorded at the courthouse. In 1952, Mary Holmes sold this sixty-acre tract to her “Aunt Hun” (Caroline Elizabeth Davis Bellinger) a.k.a. Carrie (1879-1968). The sale did NOT include the acerage of the cemetery for she thought that her gift had already been recorded. In 1966, Carrie E. Bellinger fulfilled her niece’s wish and deeded a 2.73-acre parcel to The Kaigler-Davis Cemetery Association, Inc.