FISHER ROAD CEMETERY

FOUNDED: early 1800's

ADDITONAL NAMES: Cynthia Hesdra burial site

AFFILIATION(S): N/A

HISTORY:

This small family burial about 40 ft x 80ft is hidden in a wooded lot in a gated townhouse community in Mahwah, NJ. The site includes the final resting place of Cynthia Hesdra (March 6, 1808-Feb. 9, 1879). Ms. Hesdra was enslaved for some period of her life, went on to become a successful entrepreneur who died with a fortune of over $100,000 ($2.4 million in today's money), and has been honored by the Toni Morrison Foundation for her role as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. A large handsome granite gravestone marked the site, but sadly it has been severed from its base and neighbors do not want it reset. It is not known for certain who else is buried here, though likely her parents, John and Jane Moore are there.

BCN Contact Information:

Mahwah Historic Preservation Commission

Historic@MahwahTwp.org

https://www.mahwahtwp.org/225/Historic-Preservation-Commission

MT CARMEL CEMETERY

FOUNDED: 1847

ADDITONAL NAMES: N/A

AFFILIATION(S): N/A

HISTORY:

Mt Carmel Cemetery is located at the northwest corner of Elvis Presley Blvd. and Elliston Rd. Over the years, the cemetery has been neglected, records lost due to fire, then abandoned. Negligence continues at present.

History of some influential people at Mt Carmel

-Tom Lee, African American, final resting place is at Mt Carmel. He became a Memphis hero on May 8, 1925, when he saved the lives of 32 white people from a capsized riverboat on the Mississippi River even though he could not swim. Tom Lee Park was established in 1954 and a monument erected on thirty acres of the riverfront in downtown Memphis.

-Sam Qualls, another prominent African American, final resting place is at Mt Carmel. He founded a funeral home in 1932. S.W. Qualls was one of the oldest mortuaries in the city.

-Lelia Mason, the wife of Mason Temple and Church of God in Christ (denomination) founder Charles Harrison Mason, final resting place is at Mt Carmel. Mason Temple is where Dr. Martin Luther King proclaimed in his last speech titled “Mountain Top”, on 4/3/1968, proclaimed “something is happening in Memphis; something is happening in our World!”

BCN Contact Information:

Samuel Oldham

MtCarmelAlly@gmail.com

MCWORTER CEMETERY

FOUNDED: 1836

ADDITONAL NAMES: Old Philadelphia African American Cemetery / New Philadelphia African American Cemetery

AFFILIATION(S): N/A

HISTORY:

The McWorter Cemetery, also referred to as Old Philadelphia Cemetery and New Philadelphia African American Burial Ground is located in rural Pike County, Western Illinois. According to cemetery records, the earliest burial occurred in 1851 with the death of Francis McWorter. The McWorter family owned the land on which the cemetery was established. Mr. James Washington who died in 1950 is believed to be the last known burial in the cemetery.

The McWorter African American Cemetery is historically significant as the final resting place of Free Frank McWorter, founder of the first known town in the United States to be platted and legally registered by a freed African American prior to the civil war. Free Frank's wife, Lucy, seven of their adult children, and grandchildren. Members of the African American community of New Philadelphia and Hadley Township, Illinois are interred in the cemetery. There are several star-shaped metal Grand Army of the Republic Civil War Veterans grave markers in the cemetery. In 1988, Free Frank's gravesite was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

BCN Contact Information:

Lonie M. Wilson

loniewilson@yahoo.com

BETTON HILLS PLANTATION CEMETERY

FOUNDED: 1930’s

ADDITONAL NAMES: N/A

AFFILIATION(S): N/A

HISTORY:

The site is all that remains of a much larger cemetery for African Americans dating from the pre-Civil War era through the 1940s. It was the main burial ground for black slaves and servants from the Betton Plantation as well as other surrounding plantations. The plantation system grew in North Florida as cotton plantations to the north depleted their soil from overuse. Prominent early plantations in this region included Goodwood, Waverly, and Live Oak. Turbett Betton was a prominent Tallahassee merchant who purchased roughly 1,200 acres from the Lafayette estate, lying between Thomasville and Centerville Roads. Shortly after Betton’s death in 1863, the land was purchased by Guy Winthrop. The emancipation of the slaves ruined the cotton industry, and many planters turned their land into quail hunting plantations. In 1945, the Winthrop family began subdividing the property for a new housing community called Betton Hills. Henry Watson, buried at the back of the lot with his wife, was one of Winthrop’s servants. However, most of the burials were marked with a simple wooden cross or flowers, and so no longer remain. Evidence of a burial site is marked by elongated depressions in the earth covered with altered vegetation.

BCN Contact Information:

Remus March II

remy663@gmail.com

ELLSWORTH CEMETERY

FOUNDED: 1876

ADDITONAL NAMES: N/A

AFFILIATION(S):

• Coalition to Protect Maryland Burial Sites

HISTORY:

The Ellsworth Cemetery Corporation was created on December 21, 1876. Leaders of the African American community of Westminster, including USCT Union Army Veterans, filed Maryland Articles of Incorporation to provide a burial place "for the Colored residents of Westminster, Maryland".

Through the years, Ellsworth Cemetery has been the final resting place of many African Americans of Westminster families. Black residents of the Carroll County Alms House and residents of today's Westminster Rescue Mission of all races are buried there. Strangers' Row accepts those who die Carroll County without known family.

BCN Contact Information:

Diane Boettcher

admin@ellsworthcemetery.org

https://cpmbs.org/

MOTHER ARCHIE’S CEMETERY

FOUNDED: 1891

ADDITONAL NAMES: N/A

AFFILIATION(S): N/A

HISTORY:

Mother Archie’s cemetery is located in Chadds Ford Township in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. The cemetery sits just next to the remains of what was formerly the Bullock Octagonal School (1838). In 1891, Lydia A. Archie, a Black woman and oldest ordained female Preacher in the African Union M.P. Church, purchased the property. Lydia Archie, or Mother Archie as she was often referred as, used the building as a church and the adjacent ground as a cemetery. Her congregation met regularly in the old schoolhouse until her death in 1932.

The cemetery is the final resting place of seventy-nine members of the church, including Mother Archie herself. While less than half of the gravestones remain, it is the hope of Chadds Ford Township, who obtained the property in 1954, that the remaining gravestones can be cleaned and preserved. Mother Archie, who also built and lived in a home on the same property as her church and cemetery, was a pillar of Chadds Ford’s black community from 1891-1932. After her death, the church and cemetery became inactive as Mother Archie’s children and congregation moved on and passed away.

However, both the cemetery and remains of the church continue to captivate and inspire. Andrew Wyeth was a frequent visitor of Mother Archie’s in the 1950s and painted several images of the ruins. Although Mother Archie and her congregation have left, it is the hope of the Township to preserve what Mother Archie created and celebrate the lives of those buried there.

BCN Contact Information:

Chadds Ford Township

info@chaddsfordpa.gov

FERREE’S CHAPEL CEMETERY

FOUNDED: Early 1900’s

ADDITONAL NAMES: N/A

AFFILIATION(S):

• Randolph County Library’s Randolph Room

HISTORY:

Ferree’s Chapel Cemetery is located in Randleman, North Carolina.  It is behind what is now the Academy Street Baptist Church.  It was sold to them in 1959 after the death of Tamer Allred. The administrator of her will had a commissioner appointed and the land was sold.  We have not been able to find any records of where the land originally came from. Tamer was a Quaker, and we believe she inherited the land from her father.  There are no records indicating that there was a church called Ferree’s Chapel in this spot. There is a Ferree’s Chapel in Randleman, but it is across town. The Baptist church and its forbearers do not have a cemetery with this church. 

BCN Contact Information:

Kendra Lyons

Genealogist, Randolph Room

Randolph County Public Library

JOHNSONVILLE CEMETERY

FOUNDED: N/A

ADDITONAL NAMES: N/A

AFFILIATION(S): N/A

HISTORY:

Where Dobbins Air reserve base and Lockheed Martin currently reside, a community called Johnsonville was established, founded, and built by freed enslaved peoples. In 1942 during WWII, the government acquired the Sibley Family Plantation land, where Mount Sinai Church and the Johnsonville community resided, in order to build an aircraft factory and Air Base. The Johnsonville community were forced to move to another location and the Mt. Sinai Church moved to Marietta. While the church was moved off the base, the Johnsonville Cemetery, which is the resting place of the freed enslaved and their families, still remains on what is now called the Dobbins Air reserve Base.

BCN Contact Information:

22nd Air Force public affairs

yesenia.castro_vazquez@is.af.mil

PROMISE LAND CEMETERY

FOUNDED: 1880

ADDITONAL NAMES: N/A

AFFILIATION(S): N/A

HISTORY:

The Promise Land Community was established and settled by former slaves from the Cumberland Furnace during the Reconstruction Period (1870-1875) in Charlotte, Tennessee.

Deed records and Census reports reveal that some of the early settlers were Nathan Bowen, Joe Washington Vanleer, William Gilbert, John Grimes, Jeff Edmondson, Charles Redden, George Primm, and U.S. Colored Troop Veterans brothers, John and Arch Nesbitt, Clark Garrett, Landin Williams, and Ed Vanleer. These early settlers went on to become landowners with their descendants continuing to own the land.

The Promise Land Cemetery was established in 1880. John Nesbitt purchased property with backed pension funds. U.S. Colored Troop Veterans are buried at this site like John Nesbitt and Arch Nesbitt.

Today, only the St. John Promise Land Church and the old Promise Land School Building remain. In 2007 the Promise Land School Building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. In July 2010 a Civil War Trails Marker was placed on the site of the historic school building in recognition of the Civil War records of John and Arch Nesbitt and their contributions to the community.

BCN Contact Information:

Promise Land Heritage Association

TuesRd2@gmail.com

www.promiselandtn.com

CATOCTIN FURNACE AFRICAN AMERICAN CEMETERY

FOUNDED: 1774

ADDITONAL NAMES: N/A

AFFILIATION(S):

• Catoctin Furnace Historical Society, Inc.

HISTORY:

The Catoctin Furnace African American Cemetery was rediscovered in the 1970s during preconstruction archaeological surveys for the proposed Route 15 corridor. In 1979, an archaeological data recovery excavation was undertaken and 35 graves were excavated. The human remains and associated artifacts recovered during the State Highway Administration excavations were taken to the Smithsonian Institution where they remain.

The Catoctin Furnace Historical Society, Inc. began a reanalysis of the cemetery in 2014 including heavy metals, stable isotope, and aDNA. We also compiled documentary resources to help place the study results into the context of past and present living peoples with the goal of identifying the origins of and descendants of the 18th- and 19th-century enslaved workers at Catoctin Furnace. Forensic facial reconstructions of two enslaved ironworkers are in the Museum of the Ironworker and aDNA has identified five family groups.

The Catoctin Furnace African American Cemetery may represent the most complete African American cemetery connected with early industry in the United States and may hold the key to understanding the origins of skilled African iron workers in the industry. Ultimately, results of this research will be utilized to increase awareness of the contribution of the African American workers to the iron industry at Catoctin, educating and informing the public about the role of African Americans in the industrial development of the United States.

BCN Contact Information:

Elizabeth Anderson Comer

ecomer@catoctinfurnace.org

www.catoctinfurnace.org

BARBEE-HARGRAVES CEMETERY

FOUNDED: 1790

ADDITONAL NAMES: Town of Chapel Hill

AFFILIATION(S): N/A

HISTORY:

The cemetery was in use from 1790 until 1915 for African American burials, predominantly slaves of the Morgan, Barbee, and Hargrave families and their descendants. Mark Morgan is known to have owned six slaves in 1755 named Rafe, James, Nell, Cate, Jude, and Cloe. By 1777, in the inventory of his estate, he owned 22 slaves. Since at this time slaves were inheritable property, it is likely that these enslaved laborers became property of Mark Morgan’s son Hardy. As Hardy Morgan acquired additional land grants, adding to his father’s property, he may have also acquired more slaves. The majority of the graves likely belong to these African American slaves or their descendants. There is some possibility that the cemetery was used for white burials as well.

Few of the graves are identified, but oral history tradition and interviews conducted with Hargrave descendants indicate that George Hargrove, who died in 1910, and his wife, Charlotte Hargrove, are buried in the Barbee-Hargrave cemetery. There are also stories of an engraved headstone that read “Thomas” and “1805.” It was estimated before ground penetrating radar that there were about 40 to 50 graves in the cemetery.

In May 2011, the Town of Chapel Hill Department of Parks and Recreation contracted Preservation Chapel Hill to conduct research on the cemetery and ensure its preservation. PCH worked with Scott Seibel and Terri Russ of Environmental Services, Inc., to locate and record possible unmarked grave shafts. Through the use of these methods, Seibel and Russ found that there were 53 potential burials, 24 of which had a stone marker while 29 had no observable markers. Most of the potential graves were located in noticeable rows, making them more certain.

BCN Contact Information:

Debra Lane

DLANE@TOWNOFCHAPELHILL.ORG

EDEN CEMETERY

FOUNDED: 1902

ADDITONAL NAMES: Historic Eden Cemetery

AFFILIATION(S):

• Pennsylvania Hallowed Grounds

HISTORY:

The creation of the Eden Cemetery Company was a collaborative effort to provide a sanctuary in the Philadelphia area where African Americans could be buried with dignity and respect. Founded at the height of Jim Crow, six years after Plessy v. Ferguson, Eden Cemetery was Philadelphia's African American answer to a burial crisis created in the community, due to segregation, urban expansion, public works projects, vandelism, condemnation, and the closure of earlier Black burial grounds and cemeteries. Having a dignified place for burial was a long-standing challenge to African Americans due to racism, but by the end of the 19th century the situation in Philadelphia grew even more dire with the closures of Lebanon and Olive cemeteries and the enactment of municipal ordinances that in effect prohibited the creation of new African American cemeteries within City limits.

Opened in 1902, Eden represented African American agency to address these problems by establishing a new cemetery in suburban Delaware County on fifty-three acres that were part of Bartram Farm, and as a "collection cemetery" for dislocated earlier black burial grounds and cemeteries. This move was not fraught without challenges. On August 12, 1902, Collingdale's white residents blocked the entrance to the cemetery, protesting "a colored burial ground" in their community. Authorities of the borough delayed the funeral for hours. The Delaware County community protested against its opening with a court injunction. The headline in the August 13th, Chester County Times read: "Collingdale Has More Race Troubles, Town Council Has No Use for a Colored Funeral, No African Need Apply." When a compromise was finally reached, Eden was able to have its first burial on August 14, 1902.

The cemetery quickly became a beacon of community pride and representation of African American heritage through the designation of its cemetery sections. An example of this is the John Brown section, which became the chosen resting place for many United States Colored Troops and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, a Citzen of Eden, who viewed John Brown as an important friend and hero.

Since its beginning, Eden has been a steward of the history and culture of a people, of communities made invisible,. A legavy cemetery, Eden is comprised of dislocated burial grounds, churchyards and cemeteries with over 90,000 persons entrusted to its care. The lives of the Citizens of Eden span from 1721 to the present. Monuments throughout the cemetery eternally memorialize the lives of many thousands, who are an important part of history, and the communities that they represent.

Historic Eden offers a unique cultural, educational, and historical resource in the Greater Philadelphia, Delaware Valley, and the Southeastern Pennsylvania area. The past, present, and future converge at Eden, reflecting a broad spectrum of American history, heritage, culture and memory. Eden offers tours and events designed to educate and connect the past with the present and the future.

Today, Eden is an exceptional monument to the national African American civil rights story. Historic Eden Cemetery is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, is a part of the National Park Service Underground Railroad to Network to Freedom, a member of the Pennsylvania Hallowed Grounds and a member of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.

Eden looks to the future with a continued focus on stewardship and service, with a strong consideration of how the cemetery will adapt to the ever-changing needs of the community, so that Eden can continue to preserve memory and to provide stewardship and service well into the next century.

BCN Contact Information:

Eden Cemetery

info@edencemetery.org

www.edencemetery.org

CEDAR VIEW CEMETERY

FOUNDED: 1850

ADDITONAL NAMES: N/A

AFFILIATION(S): N/A

HISTORY:

In 1850, John B. Crawford, a local land and enslaver sold the 2.5-acre site to a group of 14 Black men for use as a cemetery. The group was comprised of free black men and former slaves.

The cemetery consists of 24 plots, each measuring 99 by 39 feet. The cemetery served as the burial ground for many African American families. There are former enslaved people as well as for Civil War USCT buried at the site.

The cemetery is not active, but it is an open area, open to the public.

BCN Contact Information:

Friends of Cedar View

friendsofcedarview@gmail.com

www.cedarviewcemetery.org

OAKWOOD CEMETERY

FOUNDED: 1839

ADDITONAL NAMES: N/A

AFFILIATION(S):

• Save Austin's Cemeteries

HISTORY:

Founded in 1839, and containing over 23,000 burials within 40 acres, Oakwood Cemetery is Austin's oldest municipal burial ground. The first interment was that of an enslaved African American man who was killed while being brought into Texas by enslavers. Early burials were in the western section of the cemetery, near the Navasota gate. When the cemetery was platted in 1866, it included the area segregated by race and socioeconomic status. The Historic Colored Grounds lie on the north side of the cemetery’s main road, appearing as a flat green space with a sparse scattering of 300 gravestones. The monuments exist in various states of disrepair, some slightly visible above the grass line, many face down, and others sinking beneath the topsoil. Records indicate that thousands of named individuals are buried within this area and subsections, but no map exists as to the exact location of the burials. Additionally, early sexton’s ledgers reveal entries of hundreds of unnamed individuals, noting only their race or enslaver’s name, further denying the opportunity for descendants to trace ancestry or burial information.

The Historic Colored Grounds hold the remains of most of the cemetery’s African American burials, both free and enslaved peoples, many of whom settled in Austin’s renowned freedom colonies after the Civil War. Among them are civil rights leaders, educators, cultural icons and religious figures influential on local, state and national scales. Some of these individuals have monuments, but most do not. The City of Austin believes that Austin’s historic cemeteries remain vital for the community to remember its segregated past and how the city has changed since its founding. The segregated grounds of Oakwood Cemetery serve as a site of, and memorial to, the ongoing advancement of civil rights, in recognition of the struggle for Black equity over the past two centuries. The individuals buried in the Historic Colored Grounds were subject to segregation and institutional racism in life and death. This is evident in the poor keeping and absence of historical records compared to the rest of the cemeteries’ burials.

BCN Contact Information:

Jennifer Chenoweth

jennifer.chenoweth@austintexas.gov

https://www.austintexas.gov/department/oakwood-cemetery-chapel

NEW HOPE CEMETERY

FOUNDED: 1800s

ADDITONAL NAMES: New Hope Church Cemetery, New Hope Methodist Church Cemetery

AFFILIATION(S): N/A

HISTORY:

New Hope Methodist Church was established between 1885 and 1890 by the Black congregants of Franklin United Methodist Church. According to the late Barbara McRae, a local historian, the trustees of New Hope Methodist Church officially acquired the land tract for the cemetery in 1893. However, New Hope Cemetery was likely used prior to the establishment of the church. Usage of the cemetery ceased in the 1940s, when New Hope Methodist Church membership declined, and the church fell into disrepair. The church’s building, which is no longer standing, is said to have been burned or torn down in the late 1960s. The cemetery was in a poor condition since at least 1938, when a Works Progress Administration (WPA) worker noted that the cemetery’s condition was “very bad.” The WPA survey of the cemetery notes the four headstones that were readable at the time, which included: Lizzie Dickey, Ada Greenwood, Mollie Holden, and Jency McAfee. There is a total of 7 marked and at least 34 unmarked graves in the cemetery. Death certificates from 1909 onwards verify that at least 40 individuals were buried in the cemetery.

The cemetery is located at the top of a steep hill, which overlooks land that served as a community to a number of African American families during that time period. The last known member of New Hope Methodist Church, Josephine Greenwood Burgess, recalled that the road for carrying bodies into the cemetery eventually washed out, making the last funerals and maintenance of the cemetery difficult. Ms. Josephine Burgess passed away in 2014.

The cemetery was restored by Andrew Baldwin as part of an Eagle Scout project in 2013. He presented his proposal to clean up the cemetery to the Macon County Board of Commissioners, who agreed to support his project. They declared the cemetery “public and abandoned.” Baldwin gathered a group of volunteers, including students and a faculty member from Western Carolina University. The county contracted with a company to conduct a survey of the cemetery. As a result of Baldwin’s work, a sign was placed at the cemetery in March 2013. Later that year, the Macon County Cemetery Board of Trustees was also established to oversee maintenance of New Hope Cemetery and other abandoned cemeteries in Macon County.

BCN Contact Information:

Olivia Dorsey

hey@oliviapeacock.com

WOODLAWN CEMETERY

FOUNDED: At least since 1928

ADDITONAL NAMES: N/A

AFFILIATION(S):

• NC Historic Cemetery Registry

HISTORY:

This cemetery is located in historic West Southern Pines. In 1923, West Southern Pines was one of the first incorporated Black Townships in NC. It is on a parcel contiguous to the site of the West Southern Pines Rosenwald School that was built in 1924. The Rosenwald School building is no longer in existence.

It was made available by the Buchan Family in mid-1960’s. The West Southern Pines Churches used this cemetery to bury the members of their church.

Woodlawn Cemetery is listed on the NC Historic Black Cemetery Registry file #31MR446.

BCN Contact Information:

Southern Pines Land & Housing Trust

info@splandandhousingtrust.org

www.splandandhousingtrust.org

STRIEBY CONGREGATIONAL UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST CEMETERY

FOUNDED: 1880

ADDITONAL NAMES: N/A

AFFILIATION(S): N/A

HISTORY:

Strieby was founded by the Rev Islay Walden, who was visually impaired, grew up enslaved in the community. After emancipation, he received his teaching degree from Howard University in 1876, during which time he wrote his fist book of poems, “Miscellaneous Poems, Which the Author Desires to Dedicate to the Cause of Education and Humanity” and founded a Sabbath School. Subsequently he attended and graduated from the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, where he wrote a second book of poems, “Walden’s Sacred Poems with a Sketch of His Life,” and established another school called the Student Mission. He was ordained in 1879 and returned to Randolph County, NC, under the auspices of the American Missionary Association. He purchased 6 acres in southwestern Randolph on which he built both a church and a school and the cemetery, first called Promised Land Church and Academy. The school and church became important centers of African American life. In 1883, Walden petitioned for and was appointed postmaster of a community post office, named Strieby. The church, school, and cemetery were subsequently renamed Strieby. The school continued until the late 1920s when it was merged with another county African American school. A new church building was built in 1972 after the original was condemned. Descendants of the founders continue to bury family members in the cemetery. Rev. Islay Walden died in 1884 and is buried in the cemetery. Vella Lassiter, a community member, graduate of the school, teacher, and trustee, who won a landmark civil rights case in 1937 and affirmed by the state Supreme Court in 1939, is also buried in the cemetery.

In 2014, the site was named a Randolph County Cultural Heritage Site, by the county Historic Preservation and Landmark Commission. In 2021, the site was named a Literary Landmark by United for Libraries, in honor of the the Rev. Islay Walden, “Blind Poet of North Carolina.”

BCN Contact Information:

Margo Lee Williams

margolw@gmail.com

HAROLD AVENUE CEMETERY

FOUNDED: 1808

ADDITONAL NAMES: Jackson Cemetery

AFFILIATION(S): N/A

HISTORY:

The Harold Avenue Cemetery, circa 1808, is also known as the Black Jackson Cemetery. Located west of Old Mill Road between Lawrence Place and Harold Avenue in Wantagh is a wooded area that was used as a cemetery. The Harold Avenue burial lot was used by the descendants of the Jackson family slaves prior to 1862, the date of the first recorded burial in the Old Burial Ground on Oakfield Avenue in Wantagh.

Thomas Jackson, a white Revolutionary War veteran, deeded the property to Jeffrey Jackson, who was black, in 1808. It is probable that Jeffrey Jackson was a freed slave.

Slavery in this area had lost favor soon after the Revolutionary War and was not generally practiced. Many of the area's white families were Quakers and were opposed to slavery. The former slave owners often gave land to their freed slaves for their own farms. In many cases, the grateful freed slaves took the surnames of their former masters.

BCN Contact Information:

The Wantagh Preservation Society

wantaghmuseum@gmail.com

516-826-8767

https://nyheritage.org/organizations/wantagh-preservation-society

WOODLAWN CEMETERY

FOUNDED: May 13,1895

ADDITONAL NAMES: N/A

AFFILIATION(S): N/A

HISTORY:

Woodlawn Cemetery is a historic cemetery in the Benning Ridge neighborhood of Washington, D.C., in the United States. The 22.5-acre (91,000 m2) cemetery contains approximately 36,000 burials, nearly all of them African Americans. The cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 20, 1996.Woodlawn Cemetery was founded because of a crisis among the black burying grounds. Graceland Cemetery, founded in 1871 on the edge of the Federal City, was rapidly engulfed by residential development. By the early 1890s, the decomposition of bodies in the partially filled cemetery was polluting the nearby water supply and creating a health hazard. The Commissioners of the District of Columbia (the city's government) pressed for the closure of Graceland to accommodate the need for housing. With Graceland on the verge of closing, a number of white citizens decided that a new burial ground, much farther from any development, was needed. A portion of which was the site of the American Civil War's Fort Chaplin Burial plots were quickly laid out, and Woodlawn Cemetery opened on May 13, 1895. Between May 14, 1895, and October 7, 1898, nearly 6,000 sets of remains were transferred from Graceland Cemetery to several mass graves at Woodlawn Cemetery. Over the years, the closure of smaller churchyard cemeteries in the Federal City as well as some large burying grounds resulted in more mass graves. The last major transfer occurred from 1939 to 1940, when 139 full and partial sets of remains were relocated to Woodlawn. In all a dozen mass graves eventually came to exist at Woodlawn Cemetery. Woodlawn was an integrated cemetery, in that it accepted burials of both whites and blacks. Internally, however, it was segregated, with Caucasians being buried in a whites-only section.

As the cemetery filled and space for burial became available in desegregated cemeteries, income from the sale of burial plots dropped significantly. White burials at Woodlawn, once a significant source of income, plummeted after 1912. Lacking a perpetual care trust, the cemetery fell into disrepair. The last burial was made there about 1969,with the total number of dead at the cemetery about 36,000.

The Washington DC Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. has had a relationship with Woodlawn Cemetery since 2018, when we discovered that one of our Founders, Mary Edna Brown Coleman, was buried there. We had a vested interest in the preservation of the cemetery. In 2022, we discovered that there were two Founders of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Marjorie Hill and Sarah Merriwether Nutter, also buried at Woodlawn, so we invited Xi Omega Chapter of AKA to join us in collaboration, in assuring that the sacred grounds of Woodlawn Cemetery would always exist.

It is our desire to build community awareness of the many needs of the cemetery, while assisting the volunteers with tasks identified. Our organizations, therefore formed the Woodlawn Collaborative Project to make a difference in this sacred burial space of our ancestors.

BCN Contact Information:

Tamara Phelps

granddeltadime@gmail.com

https://woodlawndc.org/

WOODLAWN CEMETERY

FOUNDED: 1917

ADDITONAL NAMES: N/A

AFFILIATION(S): N/A

HISTORY:

Opened in 1917, during the Jim Crow era in the capital of the confederacy, Woodland's roads and front gate were built by local African American contractors. In 1916 when the cemetery was under construction, the pond was still in use as indicated by the newspaper advertisement. Families would picnic by the pond and paddle boat in it. Mitchell’s desire was to create a dignified and respectful place for African American families to come and pay homage to their deceased family members. Mitchel named the roads at Woodland after African American heroes of that era as a counter to the erection of the confederate statues on Monument Ave. Not only are the elite of Richmond’s black community buried here but Woodland has served as a dignified resting place for our US veterans of the Spanish-American War, World War I and II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Woodland Cemetery is a testament to the perseverance, dignity, and the desires of the African American community to be respected. John Mitchell was acutely aware of these feelings and his vision provided a way for respect to be shown with pride.

The significance of this cemetery is that it is evidence of a history that will be lost if we do not preserve it. Our children will grow up ignorant of the accomplishments and contributions of a whole segment of people who greatly contributed to the development of the City of Richmond. Considering the criticism and removal of African American history from our schools, Woodland will be a counter to an unbalanced history that is taught today by referencing the true history of the struggles and accomplishments of African Americans. Without Woodland’s historical contribution our children will not only grow up unaware of their history and leaving many to feel insignificant and marginalized.

BCN Contact Information:

Marvin Harris

mharris@mapinv.com

https://www.woodlandrestorationfoundation.org/