Rev. Elisha McCurdy and Florence Presbyterian Church Cemetery

 An old-time Calvinist revivalist who helped to spread the Second Great Awakening to the far reaches of the Ohio River Valley was the Rev. Elisha McCurdy.  He's buried in this very old cemetery whose church is long gone.  The oldest grave here is supposedly from 1799.  McCurdy led a sort of campmeeting-style evangelistic crusade at the now-very-quiet Upper Buffalo Presbyterian Church in Washington County, and it attracted several thousand frontier penitents.  Here's some biographical info I pulled off the website of a church he founded in the West Virginia Northern Panhandle.

In his youth McCurdy was a merchant of sorts, transporting goods the pioneers needed across the mountains from the coastal cities. He was converted while attending a prayer meeting west of the mountains and, at the age of 29, felt called upon to become a minister. Legend has it, though, that Mc Curdy was insulted by his salary — 10 pounds a year in cash, another 10 in grain and produce.

It was under McCurdy’s watchful eye that “The Great Revival” began here...back in 1802— a rebirth of [religion] that soon spread throughout the country. In its wake it brought Sunday schools, prayer meetings, the missionary movement, and the crusade against slavery as well as the campaign against strong drink, a vice McCurdy particularly abhorred. A teetotaler all his life, McCurdy once refused to give thanks for a funeral feast because whiskey was being served and, rather than deliver a funeral sermon that day, he instead preached on the evil of strong drink. When McCurdy set his mind to some thing he usually got his way, and it wasn’t long before the church members stopped serving spirits.

I couldn't find McCurdy's grave here, but I found a pretty cool one.  The shapely headstone in this picture bears the following inscription, entirely without punctuation:

Sacred to the memory of David Walker
who died on the 6th day of November 1833
in the 49th year of his age
Hush tis the last lone resting place
Where David sleeps a dreamless sleep
Let silence oer the sacred spot
Her sternest vigil keep
The sweet the loved the beautiful
Whose heart was gentle as a dove
Whose placid smile was calm as heaven
Whose radiant eyes were love
Sleep on thou sweet one calmly sleep

Unbroken noiseless rest is thine
Yet for the glowing realms of bliss
Thy spirit all divine
And pure and spotless as at first
The fetter of the grave shall burst
~A. Pruden