McConnico Cemetery – Clairborne, AL
McConnico Cemetery, also known as McConnico-Steele Cemetery, lies in rural Monroe County, Alabama, on County Road 1 southwest of Perdue Hill and a few miles south of the old Claiborne settlement near the Alabama River. The land was donated in the early 19th century by William Washington McConnico (1786–1830), an early settler from South Carolina who served in the Alabama legislature. He set aside a parcel large enough for neighbors in the growing river community. Contemporary practice led to a division: the northern section (McConnico) for white burials and the southern section (Steele) for African American and Creek Indian burials. The two parts were separated by a fence and a thin belt of cedar, privet, and camellia. Gates allowed access from the road. Burials began in the 1820s (one early marker is for Elizabeth Lee Howie, 1805–1825); the cemetery contains several hundred graves, many unmarked, and remains in use. Nearby historic burial grounds include the Claiborne Community Cemetery and the small Claiborne Jewish Cemetery. The area around Claiborne was once a bustling river town that later declined.
William Washington McConnico died in December 1830 and is buried in the cemetery that bears his name. The grounds reflect the segregated burial customs of the antebellum South while also preserving the presence of the Black and Native communities that lived and worked along the river.
Reported Hauntings and Folklore
The best-known local legend is the “Ghost Riders of McConnico.” Travelers on the road near the cemetery late at night have reported seeing a column of about twelve cavalrymen mounted on gray horses, riding two abreast at a gallop. The riders wear full cavalry uniforms with sabers and harness but no hats. Their hands, covered in white gloves, rest folded across the pommels of their saddles; the reins hang loose. Witnesses describe the men as corpse-like, sometimes with white cloths or bandages tied around their heads, and say the entire party moves in complete silence—no hoofbeats, no voices. The figures are said to appear as one descends the hill by the old cemetery and then vanish.
Local historian and columnist George “Buster” Singleton wrote about the story in the March 25, 1971, edition of The Monroe Journal (Monroeville). Kathryn Tucker Windham later devoted a chapter to it in her 1982 book Jeffrey’s Latest 13: More Alabama Ghosts, recounting an encounter claimed by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Locklin while traveling the road in a wagon. One version identifies the riders as Union cavalry; another links them to victims of a Confederate raider who reportedly cut off the ears of captured soldiers (explaining the white head coverings). Other tellings simply call them lost Confederate troopers returning to familiar ground. No contemporary 19th-century newspaper or military record has been shown to document a specific skirmish or mass burial that matches the details. The story remains local folklore, preserved and retold by Monroe County residents and later writers.
What is documented is an early-19th-century rural cemetery established through a land donation by William Washington McConnico, divided by the racial customs of the time, containing hundreds of burials from the 1820s onward, and the subject of a persistent local ghost-rider tale popularized in a 1971 newspaper column and a 1982 folklore collection.
Relevant links
Political Graveyard: Monroe County burials — politicians interred at McConnico
Find a Grave: McConnico Cemetery — location, history summary, and burial information
Find a Grave: William Washington McConnico — donor’s memorial
Dispatches from the LP-OP: Ghost Riders of McConnico — local historian’s summary of the legend
Dispatches from the LP-OP: George Singleton’s 1971 column — the newspaper piece that helped circulate the story