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Old Bayport Cemetery Reflects History of Hernando County - Stop Number 8

According to: Fivay,this article apparently appeared in the Brooksville Sun on Aug. 17, 1951. It is reprinted here in it’s orginal text.
By EDITH F. CRAIGIE
Bayport, long a favorite rendezvous of Brooksville people who like its quiet appeal, has undergone a sort of face-lifting in recent years. But one place which has not changed is the old cemetery on the hill, just this side of the Adrian Bell cottage.
Nobody seems to know much about its history, except that it has been there a very long time. Not far from the road into Bayport, and still accessible by foot, the wilderness is creeping up on it, and some of the tombstones are a bit askew. Huckleberries grow in profusion in the vicinity of the old graves, and no doubt snakes find it a happy hunting ground, for very few sightseers visit the place these days. In the spirit of brooding peace, there is a sense of forgotten people and forgotten times, an eerie, out-of-the-world atmosphere that is almost palpable.
The following inscriptions were copied from the headstones in the ancient burying grounds:
• Sacred to the memory of Wm. D. Underwood, born March 15, 1825; died March 28, 1859.
• John E. Johnson, born Rye, New Hampshire, March 21, 1823; John P. Johnson, son of above, born January 28, 1853, drowned at Bayport June 3, 1859. “A widowed mother and her son mourn their loss.”
• Sacred to the memory of the Rev. A. M. Barrington, born April 4, 1820, died March 20, 1886.
• Erected to the memory of Maj. Isaac Garrason, died 1865.
• Rev. Johnson Wright, died May 17, 1877. Age 51 years.
• Marie Nissen, wife of Jens Norskov, born in Denmark July 10, 1850, died at Bayport June 16, 1886. Anne Katherine, her daughter, born in Denmark Apr. 3, 1874 died at Cedar Keys July 18, 1881.
• Hannah Johnson, born February 14, 1814, died July 24, 1899. Greenlief Johnson, born March 7, 1849, died Aug. 17, 1880.
No one knows how the tombstones were transported to Bayport but perhaps they were brought in by water. According to the Hon. H. C. Mickler, a retired Hernando County Clark, [a son of] Maj. Garrason (or Garrison) was the first white male child born in this county. There are said to be more people buried in the Bayport cemetery than are accounted for by headstones, the graves having long since been leveled and eradicated by the inroads of time and nature.

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