Julie's Mecklenburg, Virginia Discoveries

I visited the Rainey-Sims house and cemetery in the summer of 2004. I went back this February (2021) with Wayne Rainey. He told me that Frederick Rainey built the house in 1781. Smith Rainey next owned the house, followed by Buckner Rainey, then Williamson Rainey Jr, then John J. Rainey, and then his daughter Olivia Rainey – who married John Sims. Ownership transfer was not directly father to son, but did stay within the Rainey family. John J. Rainey built an addition while he owned the house, in 1853, that about doubled the size of the house.

The Sims family had this tombstone created and placed for the multiple family members buried in this cemetery. We aren’t sure if the other two stones were set at one time and then fell, or if they were never raised up, and only made to be flat stones on the ground. John J. Rainey and John Sims tombstones both say ‘CSA 14th VA, Co. F’. The two flat tombstones marked where those two men were buried, and their names are also on the Sims Rainey family tombstone. The Rainey-Sims family cemetery and house are off of Marengo Road, not far from where it intersects with Old St. Tammany Road.

Site note: The cemetery icon below is a link to the permanent cemetery page.