Blue Branch Cemetery is located in Pitkin on LA Hwy. 10, approximately .7 miles West of LA Hwy. 113 junction, behind Mt. Olive Baptist Church. Early settlers of the Pitkin area organized the Church in 1862. The first log structure was located about five miles East of Pitkin on Brushy Creek. In 1877, the congregation moved to a more central location on Blue Branch Creek where they erected a new church. In 1890, a building first used by the Methodists and then sold to Isaac Watson for a schoolhouse, was purchased for use by Mt. Olive Baptist Church. In 1910 a new building was completed across the road, but in 1928 when the highway was widened, an attempt was made to move the building. When this effort failed, the Mt. Olive congregation purchased the old Catholic Church at Fullerton, and moved it to the church property in Pitkin. A new brick auditorium was later built and dedicated in 1959. Some early pastors of the church were: Rev. Joseph Willis, Isaac Hamilton, Tom Mayo, L. M. Nichols, Mike Smith, Joseph Rudicille, Sim Dean, Allen McCollough, J. O. Fountain, W. E. Cole, T. W. Beehan, E. A. Woods, & Herman Moses.



Blue Branch Cemetery was established in 1875 according to a sign over the entrance gate. A driveway encircles the property and divides the cemetery into three sections. The oldest burials, in very irregular rows, are in the large center section. Every effort was made to list the burials in order, but often it was necessary to copy two rows as one.



Some funeral markers and old tombstones were impossible to read, therefore, information from a recording done in 1976 was used. There were some stones copied in 1976 that were not located in 1991, but could be the unmarked graves or unreadable stones recorded today. In that case, those 1976 burials will be listed at the end of this list. Tombstone inscriptions in this cemetery were originally copied November 1976 by Jane P. McManus, and redone in October 1991 by Jane McManus and Mary Partain. New burial information was added 17 January 1995.



By Jane Parker McManus