Blog 155: Genealogical Education (4): Reflection on Cemeteries (Enslaved and Non-Enslaved)

 

By Vernon M. Herron

and Iris Chandler

     First, let me redefine some common words used in this blog, which might help us to define an era of enslavement and put us on the same page.

    

     Often, one notes a misuse of the word “slave,” which is not a proper name. It is a derision often directed toward a person held in servitude as chattel of another. “Enslavement” describes the condition of African ancestored captives who suffered atrocities in forced labor and human indiginities against their will. There were enslaved masters, not slave owners. Some African Americans were born in enslavement but were not slaves, merely captives.

     According to the social statistics of the 1860 census, there were 6,541 enslaved persons in Mecklenburg County, NC. Here, they lived and died, but where they were buried is another story. Today, there is a continuous effort, by the Comprehensive Genealogical Services and others, to seek the location and identification of the burial grounds of enslaved persons willed to obliteration.

     Urban expansion, highway construction, residential development and commercial growth have revealed unmarked burial grounds with evidence of the enslaved period of our history. In some instances, blatant desecration of sacred burial grounds illustrates the need to protect these cultural resources and the urgent need for reflection on burial plots for the enslaved.

     After an enslaved life of “rugged individualism,” at death, the enslaved or “captives,” if you please, were buried in an open field and in unmarked graves.  Characteristics of enslaved burial grounds include:

1.    The  cemetery for the enslaved was removed from the white burial

ground, if the whites were buried on the same plantation. Whites were generally buried in a church burial plot.

2.    The cemetery for the enslaved was always distant from the plantation house. Usually, it was in a grove of trees in a far-off corner of a plantation.

3.    Graves were fairly shallow.

4.    Troughs were in the ground where the decay of the corpse had

allowed the ground to sink. Graves were usually in rows, not randomly placed. These troughs always will run west and east. The belief was that at the Second Coming, Jesus Christ would come at the sunrise, like on Easter morning. Thus, the resurrected one would rise to face the east.

5.    Cemeteries for the enslaved generally had markings including a rock or field stone. Usually rough fieldstones were set at the foot or the head of the troughs. Some had names and dates scratched on the surface, but as of

           this date, such information would be weathered away.

6.    Usually there was no fence nor wall around the burial ground

which would have defined it as a space.

7.    The burial ground was usually covered with a periwinkle plant,

i.e. a groundcover that minimizes care of the ground and an evergreen that symbolizes everlasting life.

   

The Periwinkle Plant  

     Most cemeteries for the enslaved are usually covered with a periwinkle plant for minimum care. It symbolizes everlasting life. It is the common name for about 12 species of evergreen. The common periwinkle has thick, glossy, narrow-based leaves and white or blue-violet five-petaled flowers up to an inch wide.

The Comprehensive Genealogical Services (CGS)

     According to study, no one repository has a full collection of information on enslaved cemeteries in Mecklenburg County. The Comprehensive Genealogical Services has established community initiatives to locate and validate enslaved cemeteries in the county. It has discovered and registered approximately 50 burial sites for the enslaved.  These initiatives include: Identification and Location; Restoration and Preservation.

     Identification and Location include working with land owners and the general public, attempting to identify and locate burial plots of the enslaved.

     Restoration includes encouraging the property owners to:

         - clear designated burial ground of all debris

         - erect a name indicator which identifies a burial ground and

- establish accessibility to the burial ground for researchers and visitors.

     Preservation includes encouraging the property owners to:

         -maintain the burial sites in a decent and orderly fashion.