Little Place Cemetery / Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church Womack Hill Community

Little Place Cemetery, also, Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church Womack Hill Community. Choctaw County. Little Place Cemetery. Little Place Cemetery is a community cemetery that serves the African American Womack Hill community and its descendants. The establishment of the cemetery is linked to the founding of Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church, which grew from a “brush arbor” as early as 1879, and many of the deacons are buried here. The oldest burial with a headstone dates to 1894, although many of the early graves were simple burials with wooden caskets in deep graves marked with wooden crosses or other items that have since deteriorated. No early burial records exist other than the headstones and accounts of the elders of the community who have shared their memories with their descendants. According to death records, obituaries, and statements from descendants, the cemetery was also known as the Cemetery on Womack Hill, Womack Hill Colored Cemetery, and the Little Cemetery on the Hill. In 1978, the landowners deeded the approximately two-acre cemetery to the Little Place Cemetery Association, which is largely made up of descendants of those buried here. (Continued on Other Side) , Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church Womack Hill Community. (Continued From Other Side) Choctaw County, named for the Choctaw Nation of Native Americans, was established in 1847. According to the 1850 US census, the population was 8,379 with 3,769 of African descent. Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church, located 3 miles to the west of here on Womack Hill Road, is in the historical center of the community. The Womack Hill community, Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church and Little Place Cemetery all have their roots in the latter years of slavery and the establishment of communities by “freed men.” The church congregation grew alongside the community, formally organized and, according to the date on the cornerstone, constructed a church building in 1887, thus better serving the then vibrant Womack Hill community. The area’s population peaked in the 1920s due to the rise in the number of sawmills and agricultural resources as well as trade via steamboat along the Tombigbee River to Mobile and the Gulf Coast. The cemetery tell a story of a close-knit community of educators, homemakers, farmers, inventors, veterans, timber-men, and dock workers and raftsmen on the Tombigbee River, as well as workers in the railroad and oil industries that supported the community and the region. Listed in the Alabama Historic Cemetery Register on November 9, 2022.