Bedford Plantation Cemetery

The Cemetery is located in Bedford Plantation development north of Poplar Avenue near the Collierville city limits and Houston Levee Road. Northwest corner looking south.  The fence is 33” tall, 35′ 6″ from front to back, and 25′ 6″ along the back of the enclosure.

Forest Hill: Location of Buried Treasure?

by Beverly Booth, The Germantown News
September 15, 1977
Printed June 7, 2018

Julian and Virginia Kenney Bedford

On the east end of Germantown lies the former community of Forest Hill, scarcely a likely location for a hidden treasure.  In post-Civil War times, there was such a hunt here. 

In a recent interview with Louise Duke Bedford, a former resident of Germantown and a descendent of Britton Duke, one of Germantown’s pioneers, she recalled incidents that occurred many years ago in the area now known as Forest Hill.

Mrs. Bedford’s husband, the late Will Bedford, was the grandson of Virginia Kenny Bedford. The Kenny family had come to Shelby County from Virginia in 1834.  After Miss Kenny’s marriage to Julian Bedford, the couple lived in the Kenny home east of Forest Hill near the present location of Ridgeway County Club.

“Mrs. Bedford had 1100 acres there at the time of her death,” the present Mrs. Bedford said.  “During the Civil War, the Yankees had a big encampment in her grove and a skirmish there that was recorded in some of the histories.  It was said to be the highest point in Shelby County.     The Yankees climbed up in the big oak trees that grew there so they could see and watch for General Forrest.  They were deathly afraid of Forrest’s onsets; and at one time a man climbed up in the tree at her gate, fell out, broke his back, and killed himself.”

The Yankee officers stayed in the Bedford house, the present Mrs. Bedford said.  “She (Virginia Kenny Bedford) was allowed to live in the back part of the house with her children.  She had to furnish meals for the Yankee officers and their families.  The wives had come South to visit them. 

“They used to fix a big meal for the Yankee officers in her house.  She’d have the Confederates in the next room, and the Yankees never knew the Confederates were being slipped in the fed from their supplies.”  Finally, after the officers left, she and her children left to take refuge with their father-in-law down in Como, Miss. while her husband was in service.

“When the Yankees raided, they took everything on earth they could find.  They dug up the graves of her children, thinking there was money buried there.  When she came home after the surrender, her piano was out in the backyard.  They had carried off everything they, but couldn’t get away with that.”

“After the war, the story went around that the Yankees had buried a lot of money out there to keep Forrest from getting it.  When they moved out, they lost track of where the money was.  Yankee officers went back home and wrote Mrs. Bedford wanting to come down and dig for the money, saying they would share it with her.  She laughed and said, “I wouldn’t have shared fifty cents with them.  She didn’t even answer their letters”.  No money was ever found; there never was anything there.”

After surviving the perils of war and Yankee occupation, the Bedford family, unfortunately, fell prey to yellow fever.  They lost a great many members of the family.  Virginia Bedford lost her husband and her oldest son, 21 years old – one, one day and one, the next. 

“The Bedford family that lived across the railroad had it – Mrs. Bedford’s brother-in-law and his family.  I know they lost a little girl, a brother, and another child with it.  They had to bury them immediately.  It was so terrible, yet, that illness was so horrible.  They vomited so and hurt so; their bodies would swell.  They had to bury them immediately because they were scared to death of letting them stay out of the ground.  They were afraid it would spread the contagion.”

“There were men who had had yellow fever and had recovered.  They did the burying.  They were called the Howard nurses.  A great many people seemed to be immune to yellow fever.  I guess they were like me,” Mrs. Bedford said.  The mosquitos just didn’t bite them.  None of the Duke family died from yellow fever, but the Bedford family was almost wiped out.”

Source: https://germantown.newpapers.com/image/408709506