Smithfield's Riverside Cemetery is nestled along river, creek and playground

The town of Smithfield, N.C., has several cemeteries, I learned after my visit there on Feb. 17. During my visit, I spent a small chunk of time photographing bits of the oldest cemetery of them all. Riverside, which dates to 1777, sits a couple dozen yards away from the Neuse River and is flanked by Church and Front streets.

In the time between when I wrote yesterday's post and just now, I learned that the cemetery I came upon adjacent to St. Paul's Episcopal Church at the above intersection actually is an extension of Riverside, and not a church graveyard.

According to the town's public works cemetery operations, Smithfield also has Sunset Memorial Garden, where Ava Gardner is buried, as well as Oakland Cemetery at North and Fifth streets, John Thomas Cemetery at Second and North streets, and Resthaven on 12th Street.

Riverside has a memorial to Confederate soldiers who died in the Battle of Bentonville, the last major battle in the Civil War and the war's biggest battle in North Carolina. The obelisk, pictured above, was dedicated in 1887. It is not hard to find; it's tall enough to spot easily, and it stands on a mound approximately in the middle of the cemetery grounds and is surrounded by soliders' graves.

The graves are adorned by flags which, based on a photo of the monument I found online, at one time were true replicas of the well-known Confederate flag. Perhaps in response to recent opposition to how the flag too closely reminds people of the country's slavery history, those flags no longer fly there. The flags on the graves when I visited (photo above) were versions of the Confederacy's original flag, the Stars and Bars -- three solid horizontal stripes (two red, one white) and a blue canton in the upper left upon which sit seven stars representing the first states to join the confederacy (it later grew to 11 and then 13). The link to the monument photo in this paragraph also contains more history behind the monument; the link near the information about the flag tells the story of the Confederate flags.

The pictures you see in this post are of Riverside and the greenway along Buffalo Creek, which flows into the Neuse not far from the cemetery. In the photos below, more cemetery photos appear first. They are followed by shots of the Riverside Extension Cemetery (created in 2008, so you'll recognize it because it will appear newer and less crowded), the nearby greenway, Buffalo Creek and the adjacent Jaycee Park and its playground. Based on satellite pictures I've examined on Google Maps, I'm presuming the creek is normally barely noticeable. But at this time of year, when we've had considerable rainfall in North Carolina, it was pretty significant.

As usual, to view a larger, sharper version of a photo, simply click on it. This is particularly helpful if you access the blog using a mobile device.

Photo geek stuff: This should be no surprise to regular visitors. I used my Canon 6D and Tamron 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD lens for the shoot, grabbing three exposures of each composition that I later melded into one using Photomatix software during post-processing.