The Stanley Church of Christ is nestled up on a small hill in the very, very beautiful mountains of North Georgia. While the church no longer holds regular services, there’s a homecoming service every year in August (read up on interesting traditions here) that brings a bunch of folks and, interestingly enough, there’s always a tourist or two thanks to Atlas Obscura. The former groups visits for family and fellowship. The latter group is just here for THAT ARM.
Many years ago, Buel’s arm was separated from his body. How? Whyyyy? Answer: dynamite. See, Buel wanted to catch a mess of fish and he wanted to do it fast. He decided that using a short stick of dynamite (which seemed to much more readily available at that time than it is now, which is a good thing) would do the trick. It did not.
Story goes that Buel awkwardly rowed to shore, tucked his mangled limb into the bibb of his overalls and hightailed to the house. The doctor showed up and had to amputate quite a bit of Buel’s arm since the damage was pretty expansive. It all happened on the kitchen table, as things did back then.
Even though Buel’s arm didn’t survive, he did. And believing that he could be reunited with his arm in the afterlife, Buel had the limb buried in his family cemetery. Buel lived on for many years and when he died he was buried in another cemetery down the way. Was there a spiritual arm + Buel reunion after his passing? Heaven only knows.
AND I met the 90+ year old grandnephew of Buel, one Mr. Ralph Stanley, while he was out doing cemetery upkeep! He’s the one that had a, uh, armstone/headstone replaced in the cemetery as you can see by the inscription. He told us wonderful stories about the Stanley family. He still lives at the family homestead, takes meals on the same kitchen table where Buel was parted from such said arm, and still fishes (sans dynamite) at the same spot that Buel went that fateful day. This was one heck of cemetery visit as I rarely get to meet direct descendants…
There are a lot of stories about this church and cemetery, and I hope to revisit them at some point, but there’s one that kind of ties in with this story.
The creek where Buel lost his arm is named after Elisha Stanley, whose grave is the oldest in the cemetery. Elisha, like many in the area, was pro-Union and when he and his brother-in-law Elv Evan Hughes were confronted by Confederate soldiers they were both shot as deserters. Legend has it that in order to save time digging graves in the rocky mountain soil, the men were buried together.
You can see/read more about the church via the Historic Rural Churches of Georgia site.
