Howell-Spurlin Cemetery (Shelby, North Carolina)

Howell-Spurlin Cemetery is a small family burial ground in Shelby, Cleveland County, North Carolina.^[1] Find a Grave added the cemetery on 1 July 2004. In September 2026 its page recorded 16 memorials, a quarter of them with a grave photograph, and gave no GPS coordinates and no written description.^[1] The page has four photographs, uploaded between 2008 and 2013. The caption on a 2008 view of the cemetery from the road gives its location as Brenard Drive in Shelby.^[1]

Burials

The memorials belong to the Howell, Spurlin, Hardin, Spake and Tucker families. The recorded deaths run from 1828 to 1907.^[2]

The earliest dated grave is that of John Howell (1744 – 27 May 1828).^[2][3] The biography on his memorial says he was born in Maryland, grew up in what is now Henry County, Virginia, and enlisted in the 2nd North Carolina Infantry in June 1777. According to the memorial, he was wounded in the right calf at the Battle of Guilford Court House and received a 640-acre bounty grant in what is now Shelby.^[3] Its vital-record fields give Virginia as his birthplace, so the memorial is not consistent on this point. Later Howell burials include Joshua Howell (died 10 June 1838), Jesse Howell (died 2 March 1844) and Elias Howell (died 28 July 1862).^[2][4]

John Tucker (1771 – 2 November 1847) is also buried here. The biography on his memorial names a son, John M. Tucker, as the first commissioner of Cleveland County.^[5] The latest dated burial is William M. Spake (4 October 1825 – 23 December 1907).^[2]

Spurlin graves

Five memorials carry the Spurlin surname:^[2]

• an infant son of Jesse Spurlin, died 1850^[6]
• Thomas Spurlin, died 1 July 1851^[7]
• R. A. Spurlin, died 10 October 1854^[8]
• Jesse Spurlin, died 9 April 1888^[9]
• Jerry Spurlin, died 28 September 1890^[10]

A single contributor created all five on 22 October 2013. They give places and dates of death but no birth dates, and only R. A. Spurlin's memorial has a grave photograph.^{[6][7][8][9][10]} Jerry Spurlin's memorial links to a daughter, Lettie Spurling Ross (1854–1936), which shows the spelling moving between Spurlin and Spurling within one family.^[10] The Spurlin graves account for the second half of the cemetery's name. No source consulted explains how the Howell and Spurlin families came to share the ground.

Records

Access Genealogy's index of Cleveland County cemetery transcriptions lists the Howell-Spurlin Cemetery among the burial grounds whose transcriptions are hosted by the Cleveland County, North Carolina Tombstone Transcription Project.^[11] See also Spurlin cemeteries for other burial grounds named for the family.

Howell and Spurlin in an 1826 court case

The North Carolina Supreme Court's December 1826 term includes John Howell v. Martin Elliott, an appeal from Rutherford County. The dispute concerned a November 1816 bill of sale in which Jesse Spurlin conveyed a horse, a cow and calf, and feather beds to John Howell Sr. as security for a debt.^[12] This puts the Howell and Spurlin names together in the same neighborhood decades before the Spurlin burials recorded in the cemetery. Whether the Jesse Spurlin of 1816 is the Jesse Spurlin who died in 1888 has not been established. A 1982 Cleveland County family history also records Isaac Spurlin buying land from a Martin Elliott in 1815 (see Spurlins of Cleveland and Rutherford Counties, North Carolina).^[13]