This cemetery is known as the Upchurch Family Cemetery and is located on the northwest side of Bethesda Church Rd., 0.15 mile south from Hidden Valley Dr., and across the street from the Unitarian Universalist Church driveway. The Upchurch family originally came from North Carolina, and settled in a community which once was known as Gloster and now is a part of Lawrenceville. (Gloster was a flag station on the Seaboard Railroad, five miles west of Lawrenceville.) The Upchurches are listed in the 1860 and 1870 US FED censuses as being neighbors to the Brownlee family (who also have a family cemetery 0.36 mile further south on the same road).

According to the Gwinnett Herald (10 SEP 1895), Harvil (H. H.) Upchurch, age 79, died on September 5, at his home near Gloster, had raised four children, and was buried in the "family cemetery". Possibly buried here along with Harvil Upchurch is his wife, Margaret Harvey Upchurch, and parents, Britain and Elizabeth Massey Upchurch.

By the 1960's, the cemetery had fallen into a state of abandonment and desecration. Rumors were that the property owner adjacent to the north side of the cemetery, built a home there, removed the tombstones, and threw them into a deep, brushy drainage ditch across the road. A concerned member of the community, H. M. Mitchell, acquired the 0.14 acre parcel, # R6128 004A, whereupon he deeded the parcel back to Gwinnett County as a cemetery. H. M. Mitchell recalled, as a boy, finding one headstone with inscriptions, with perhaps a death date of 1853, and another headstone that was carved. He also understood there were Upchurch and Lockridge burials there.

The cemetery in 2016 is much like it was when some Upchurch descendants visited it in 1990. There still are some flat stones scattered on the ground that were possibly corner stones, but there are just remnants of a fence to the rear of the graveyard. Other than that, the road was widened (but the cemetery was left undisturbed). The offending neighbor's home no longer exists, and no tombstones have ever been recovered.

SOURCE: Gwinnett Historical Society cemetery files