We’ve spoken here and here and here of the plantation of Dr. Edwin Barnes, whose house sat near the intersection of modern Old Stantonsburg Road and Fairfield Dairy Road near those of his brother William Barnes and relative Wiley Simms. (Gen. Joshua Barnes was another brother.)

Edwin Barnes’ house was destroyed by fire in 2005. The sole trace of his tenure on the land is a small family cemetery tucked a few hundred feet from the home site under an enormous, lush boxwood. Here are buried Edwin Barnes, who died in 1885 at age 69; his wife Elizabeth Simms Barnes (1824-1875); and about a dozen assorted relatives.

But where are buried the dozens and dozens of men and women who worked Elias Barnes’ fields?  We know the locations of just one or two slave cemeteries in Wilson County. Unmarked or impermanently marked, these sites are forgotten and largely untraceable — plowed under or overgrown in the decades since the last burial.

Wherever the dead may rest, we honor and pledge to preserve their memory.

The cemetery rattles with dried stalks of dog fennel.

Edwin Barnes’ marble stele. The cemetery on this early spring day was weedy and unkempt, but shows signs of at least fitful cleaning.

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, March 2024.