Miss Lizzie Cheek watches over U.S. 15-501 from her grave just before the entrance to the Briar Chapel development at Herndon Road.

For decades, Lizzie slumbered quietly, until construction workers and utility crews cleared away trees, vines and brush to reveal her black granite gravestone marker, overturning her stone with their equipment. The disturbance did no lasting damage, but it brought Lizzie into the public eye briefly.

She died at age 26, on Jan. 23, 1919. Her death was recorded in Durham, her body laid to rest in north Chatham.

Fred J. Vatter, historian and Chatham County Historical Association member, has been searching for answers to why "Lonely Lizzie" as he calls her, sits alone alongside the highway.

"You open up the Chatham County phone book, and you will find pages of Cheeks," he said. "I've yet to have any family members step forward and identify Lizzie or claim her."

Recently Vatter wrote a piece for the Chatham County Line newspaper asking for leads, but there have been none so far.

Lizzie's father, Robert David Cheek, married Fannie Brewer. The land where Lizzie is buried came to the Cheek family through her mother's people, the Brewers.

An early death

Twenty-six was a young age for a single woman to die in the beginning of the 20th century. Her death certificate, which can be found at the Durham County Register of Deeds, lists "Influenza & Pneumonia" as the cause of death. Local historians say the Spanish Influenza Epidemic of 1919 took many lives in Chatham County.

Lizzie's parents had seven children. A sister, Lola Cheek, married a local man, Walter E. Riggsbee, and both were buried at Lystra Baptist Church, instead of the family's homestead less than a mile away. Vatter wonders where the other family members that were once in the private cemetery may be.

"If the graves were moved, we don't know where," he said. "And why would they leave Lizzie alone by the side of the road?"

For now he's puzzled.

But this wouldn't be the first time graves had been relocated.

"When the government built Jordan Lake they had to move thousands of graves before flooding the area," Vatter said. "Those bodies were laid to rest in local church or private cemeteries and essentially scattered all over the county."

Vatter worries that family members buried in the Cheek cemetery may not have been moved.

"We have to hope that when the new 15-501 Highway was re-routed, Lizzie's family members didn't end up underneath that pavement!"

Lizzie's death certificate states her place of burial was Lystra Church, which further complicates matters -- was she buried there with her sister Lola and moved back to the Herndon Road family cemetery?

Family farther back

The Cheek family house sits on a knoll to the right of the Briar Chapel entrance, which is also the entrance to Herndon Road. The current owner, who does not want her name published, says the family is still buried on the property, much farther back from the road.

She says hearsay has it that the house was built at the turn of the century by one of the Cheek sisters -- Luna or Lizzie, no one knows -- by a fiancee who was sent away when the house was complete. The home is in excellent condition, though it will not be staying in its location much longer, since Newland Communities bought the property and the resident will either move the home or have it dismantled.

The story goes that the grave markers and stones were vandalized sometime around World War II, the resident says. All the gravestones were taken but Lizzie's, which was too heavy for the vandals -- a possible explanation for the marker being at the edge of the property.

County legend has it that the gravestones were tossed over the bridge at Morgan Creek, then recovered by a man who used them to pave his backyard.

According to the resident, the family remains are still on her former plot of land, yet to be developed by Newland Communities. She says where Lizzie's stone now sits is just where it was moved by the vandals and that she believes Lizzie is still with her family where the cemetery sits sans markers well back from 15-501. The lack of markers in the woods makes it hard to know exactly where.

There are unmarked graveyards up and down 15-501, said Vatter, the historian.

"Right where Harris Teeter (Chatham Downs) was built, to the side, there is a gentle slope with some trees and rows of field stones; those are gravestones entirely left unmarked," he said. Whether or not Lizzie actually lies at the site of her marker, no one can say. What her monument does is remind us of stories long past, the history of people and a place that can be lost as progress rushes in to claim and restructure the landscape.