Hidden along the wooded slopes of Brush Creek Township in Scioto County, Ohio, the small grave of Roy McCall rests quietly beneath the canopy at Beech Fork Cemetery. His modest, hand-carved monument is both a personal memorial and a remarkable example of Appalachian folk artistry — a child’s death preserved in local stone and regional symbolism.
📜 A Brief Life
According to his Ohio Certificate of Death, Roy McCall was born January 5, 1908 in Brush Creek Township to Moses McCall and Ruth Smith. He died October 28, 1912, at just four years old, from lung congestion caused by diphtheria, a common and often fatal illness among children in the early 20th century.
He was buried at Beech Fork Cemetery, a rural burial ground nestled among the hills of western Scioto County, not far from the homes of extended family and neighbors.
🪵 A Monument of Symbol and Skill
Roy’s gravestone is hand-carved from local stone and depicts a powerful scene: a lamb, head bowed in eternal sleep, resting gently on the stump of a felled tree.
These motifs carry deep symbolic meaning:
🐑 The Lamb is a long-standing Christian symbol of innocence and purity, often used on the graves of children.
🌳 The Felled Tree represents a life cut short, a future interrupted, but not forgotten.
What sets this monument apart is the care and intention in its creation. Far from being a product of necessity or rural limitation, the marker reflects the rich stonecutting tradition of Scioto County, particularly in Brush Creek and Nile Townships, where several stone quarries once operated. Generations of quarrymen and stonemasons lived and worked here, and many family monuments, like Roy’s, were carved either by relatives or local artisans.
In many cases, these hand-carved sandstone and limestone markers have outlasted their mass-produced marble counterparts, whose inscriptions have faded with time. The durability of Roy’s monument is a testament to the skill of its maker and the permanence of memory.
🧭 A Regional Language of Grief
This gravestone belongs to a larger visual language of grief found throughout the Appalachian region, where mourning was expressed not only in scripture and song but in stone often through symbols like lambs, doves, broken columns, or tree stumps.
In this context, Roy McCall’s monument is not only a tribute to a lost child, but also a work of vernacular art ; one that speaks to the ways families in southern Ohio processed loss, preserved memory, and expressed devotion in the face of early death.
🧱 3D Capture
Captured using Polycam in June 2025, this high-resolution 3D model documents the full detail of Roy McCall’s monument. The lamb and tree stump are clearly visible, offering insight into both the craftsmanship and symbolism of early 20th-century family-carved markers in rural Scioto County.
