BERRY CEMETERY

FOUNDED: 1880

ADDITONAL NAMES: Holy Resurrection Cemetery

AFFILIATION(S):

• Ozarks Afro-American Heritage Museum

HISTORY:

The Berry Cemetery, also known as Holy Resurrection Cemetery, is an historic African American burial ground; at least 73 individuals, mostly African Americans, have been interred in the cemetery since 1880. The cemetery is located near Ash Grove, a town in southwest Missouri, in the Ozarks region of the U.S. The one-acre cemetery is in a rural setting, on a rise overlooking fields and bordered on three sides by woods. The burial ground itself is a relatively open green space with scattered evergreen and deciduous trees, reached by a dirt track from a paved rural highway.

The Berry Cemetery today contains at least 60 historic grave markers including 25 inscribed head stones, 11 inscribed foot stones, 15 head or foot stones without inscriptions, six concrete markers, and a depression bordered by upright field stones. The cemetery also contains two (or three) stone cairns identified in Berry family oral history as Indigenous burials markers. In addition, in recent years, multiple wooden posts and Orthodox wooden crosses have been placed at previously unmarked graves. Among the historic stone markers, the most common materials are limestone and marble. Gravestone styles include tablet, block, pulpit, cross-vault obelisk, and unshaped fieldstone. Burials are arranged in rows oriented north-south and graves are oriented east-west with headstones at the west end of graves.

**Click to read more

BCN Contact Information:

Dr. Elizabeth Sobel

ESobel@missouristate.edu

Berrycem.com