Grave Matters

On a crisp day last fall, I strode through fallen leaves as I checked gravestones for vandalism and erosion. I was visiting Charlottesville’s Daughters of Zion Cemetery to give an outdoor lecture to Professor Patrice Grimes’ education class.  By leading her students around the historic African-American cemetery, I hoped to convince them of the benefits of using this outdoor history museum as a resource in their classes. For the past eight years, I have recorded information from historic black graveyards in Albemarle and Amherst counties. With the early support of the Carter G. Woodson Institute I created a website to enable descendants to search for relatives (www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/cem/). Today this site contains information on dozens of local cemeteries and over 5,000 individuals.

Why are these sites important to study and preserve?  Cemeteries provide a window into the past, into family networks, gender relations, religious beliefs, local neighborhoods, and material culture.  The epitaphs and inscriptions on African-American gravestones alone provide valuable information about the lives, belief systems, and kinship ties of the deceased. Gravestone inscriptions fall into two main categories: personal information specific to the deceased (referred to here as an "epitaph") and non-specific information often taken from Biblical quotes or bereavement expressions (referred to here as "inscriptions").  Inscriptions tend to follow "fashions" in changing attitudes towards death. For example, through such statements as, "She is at rest" or "He sleeps," early 20^th Century markers emphasize a peaceful afterlife, The best known variant in this category is "Rest in peace" or R.I.P. In contrast, the inscriptions on late 19^th Century stones tend to be spare and more direct, referring simply to "death" or the fact that an individual has "died."

I use the term" epitaph" to refer to the biographical data that occasionally accompanies an inscription.  Epitaphs can include references to the deceased's work, church affiliation, or family life. For example, in the Daughters of Zion Cemetery, Rose Jones' gravestone highlighted her membership in a local African-American Masonic Lodge: Queen Esther Temple No. 7, I.B.P.O.E.W.  Nellie Coleman's stone in the Coolwell Baptist Church Cemetery in Amherst states that she was the wife of "J.W. Hutcherson," and identifies Nellie as “A teacher from her youth, a graduate of VA. State College.”  Her epitaph concludes, “Her rest shall be fortified.” Epitaphs can reveal aspects of the deceased's identity that don't appear in census records or city directories, thus making them an invaluable source of historic information.

The gravestones in African-American cemeteries range from large, granite slabs to impermanent wooden posts. They include mass-produced markers such as inscribed marble, small metal picture frames provided by funeral homes, soapstone "boards," as well as hand-carved markers fashioned from soapstone, marble, or concrete. Some gravestones convey a great deal of information; others are inscribed with very few words, while still others are blank.  For example, slave gravestones usually lack the name of the deceased and the date of death. This practice, which may be due, in part, to early 19^th Century laws that made it illegal to teach enslaved people  to read and write, suggests an emphasis on collective mortuary practices rather than marking the death of an individual. Accordingly, many uninscribed slave gravestones are clustered into kinship groupings, rather than arranged in rows as individual markers.

Additional stone types include white and pink quartz, carved river cobbles, and unusually shaped fieldstones.  Portions of these “rocks” have been modified into distinct shapes, indicating a folk carving tradition.  Because many stones in this category lack inscriptions and resemble other local fieldstones, such gravestones often go unnoticed and are occasionally removed or inadvertently destroyed by property owners.

Like gravestones, cemetery landscapes reveal aspects of cultural identity, as well as beliefs and aesthetic practices.  The environs of European-American cemeteries in mid-19^th century America are perhaps among the most studied.  During this period churches and private cemetery corporations began landscaping and designing burial grounds to resemble parks. These manicured landscapes remain popular today. This convention leads to a misconception that an overgrown cemetery, one that is not mowed, planted with grass, or enclosed by a formal fence is “abandoned.”  However, in many cases,  “informal” burial grounds may represent deliberate articulations of a unique cultural identity and a particular philosophy toward death and burial.  For example, this project documents many African-American cemetery landscapes in Virginia that are patterned differently from European-American cemeteries.  Characterized by profuse plantings (including yucca plants, tree-of-heaven, daffodils, periwinkle, cedar trees, and clusters of perennials),  these riotous plantings leave the overall impression that African-American cemeteries exhibit a greater focus on flora, foliage, color and shade—an accentuation or enhancing of the natural landscape, than on pruned and uniform lawns.

African-American cemeteries, large and small, can be found all over the Commonwealth.  Several notable examples are located on the very grounds of the University of Virginia. For instance, what students and passers-by generally view as an "empty space" between two of the Hereford Residential College's dorms  is in fact an ante-bellum cemetery.  Although no traces of gravestones or above-ground markers remain today, the site contains over 70 graves of  enslaved individuals who worked at the nearby Piedmont Plantation.  Faint depressions remain visible in a small patch of woods off  Floyd Drive.  A commemorative sign, added by the University in 1984, reads "Graveyard Site: This area contains unmarked graves believed to be those of slaves owned by the Maury family, owners of Piedmont in the 19^th Century."

The Piedmont plantation was located on land that is now occupied by the Piedmont Family Housing area off of Jefferson Park Avenue.  Some of the original houses, including a farm house and part of a chapel are still standing. Old topographic maps indicate a white cemetery, which may have been the Maury family cemetery, near what is now the Fontaine Research Park. In contrast, the slave cemetery was located about three-quarters of a mile from the plantation house. Because no stones remain, it is impossible to determine which families were buried here. Hopefully, additional archival research or oral history will provide us with information about the individuals buried in this graveyard.

Conducting such archival research and oral history has been one of the primary undertakings of the African-American Cemeteries project.  Interdisciplinary in nature, the project draws as well on anthropological, archaeological, sociological, geological, and environmental evidence and investigative techniques.  Because of the scope and complexity of this work, multiple methodologies are  necessary to understand cemeteries in their full cultural and historical significance.  One of the goals of my project is to document these historic cemeteries so that their location becomes part of the public record.  The process of documentation has been a collective effort that seeks to involve local residents.

While destroying any grave marker or causing damage to a cemetery is a crime (see Code of Virginia section 18.2-126), if a graveyard is classified as "abandoned" or "neglected" a county, city, or town can claim ownership of the cemetery and use the land for other purposes after removing the bodies to another location. Once graves have been exhumed, it becomes very difficult for relatives to locate their ancestors. The good news is that people have the right to gain access to their old family graveyards, even if they are located on land no longer owned by the family, providing the family members give adequate notice to the landowner (see Code of Virginia section 57-27.1).

If you have information about African-American burial sites, family cemeteries, or church graveyards, please consider submitting the information to us via the "How to Get Involved" link on our website (www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/cem/).  Your information will then be accessible to city and town planners as they coordinate Albemarle County's continued economic growth. Try to document the location of the cemetery, the number of burials, the names of the individuals buried in the cemetery, and any stories connected with the lives of the interred individuals.  Sharing this information with local churches, historic societies, or community members will enable future generations to learn about the lives and contributions of these individuals, and to preserve their final resting places. Local communities, churches, and land owners have offered invaluable support to the African-American Cemeteries Project by graciously sharing family histories, stories, and providing access to the cemeteries listed in the database. 

For those interested in participating in the project of identifying and documenting African-American cemeteries, on-line guides and forms are available on the web site to help you get started. If you have questions about how to record cemetery information, please contact Lynn Rainville at . 

The “African-American Cemetaries in Albemarle or Amherst County” project has been generously supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities (VFH), the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies, and Sweet Briar College.