ADAIR COUNTY NEWS

A Grave Marker for a Highly Respectable Citizen In the Montpelier community newsletter printed in the January 17, 1906 Adair County News, Rev. Z. T. Williams, the Montpelier correspondent, wrote of his brother-in-law, Sam Wheat (son of Cyrus & Ellen) and Jo Williams (son of Rev. Z. T. and Clemmie Wheat Williams): "I must mention here a very commendable act of kindness recently shown by Sam in memory of an old colored man. John Z. Miller, a highly respectable citizen, who had lived at Montpelier for 35 years, died last summer and Sam and Jo had a suitable monument made and placed at his grave. Few young men would have thought of such kindness as that." (No mention is found in any volume of the Cemeteries of Adair County of Mr. Miller's grave marker. The most likely place of burial would have been in what is now called the Old Bethel Cemetery, located at the corner of (modern day) Old Montpelier Rd. and Acree Rd. That cemetery is literally within shouting distance of where Rev. Williams and his family lived, and but little farther removed from the Cyrus & Ellen Wheat place.)