Out at Old Baptist cememtery, near the south entrance, is a sign that was erected in 2000 by Hannibalian Paul Fix. He earned the distinction of Eagle Scout by creating an impressive sign of his own design that describes the “Tom Sawyer” legend -- some people believe that Old Baptist is the cemetery Mark Twain had in mind when writing
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
You'll recall that Tom and Huck decide to go out late one night to the cemetery with a dead cat to hold a ritual for removing warts, and that's where they witness Injun Joe murdering Doc Robinson...well, some believe that this is that cemetery!
In his description of the cemetery, Mark Twain would write: "It was a graveyard of the old-fashioned Western kind. It was on a hill, about a mile and a half from the village. It had a crazy board fence around it, which leaned inward in places, and outward the rest of the time, but stood upright nowhere. Grass and weeds grew rank over the whole cemetery. All the old graves were sunken in, there was not a tombstone on the place; round-topped, worm-eaten boards staggered over the graves, leaning for support and finding none..."
