African-American cemetery

Eden and Mount Lawn cemeteries, Philadelphia.

I don’t know that it’s possible to know exactly how many made the journey, but Philadelphia was a landing spot for hundreds of African-Americans who migrated from Wilson County, including my grandmother. On a quick recent trip to the area, I sought out Historic Eden Cemetery, listed as final resting place on several Pennsylvania death certificates for Wilson County natives. To my surprise, my route took me right past Mount Lawn Cemetery, which also holds burials of Wilson County migrants.

We honor our kinfolk, their lives, their struggles and triumphs. Rest in peace.

 

 

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, November 2025.

Another Odd Fellows cemetery!

We saw here that a half-dozen or more African-American Odd Fellows lodges were scattered around Wilson County in the early 1900s. Two were in the town of Wilson — Mount Hebron, whose lodge was in the 500 block of East Nash, and Zion Hall, which was in the Grabneck community. Others were in unclear locations in or near Stantonsburg, Black Creek, and Lucama, and three were at locations completely unknown.

I stumbled on a clue today.

While running down a loose end related to Saint Delight Original Free Will Baptist church, at (2), my cursor paused on the square outlined in blue, at (1). I glanced at the owner of this lot. Odd Fellows Society?!? And with the same generic Bishop L.N. Forbes Street address as the Lane Street Project’s Odd Fellows Cemetery. Per the tax record for this parcel, this is a cemetery. [The parcels marked (4) are also cemeteries — Saint Delight’s original cemetery and an expansion lot acquired in 1993. I believe (3) is the lot on which Kirby’s Crossing School once stood.]

Which Odd Fellows lodge was this? And large enough to establish its own cemetery? Wow!

A plat map showing a division of property for the Lucian Kirby heirs, filed in 1992, answers the question. Here’s a detail:

Plat Book 22, page 220, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office, Wilson.

The key identifies the owner of (3) as Lucama Odd Fellows Grand United Order No. 3501. (This may be a typo, as other documents record the lodge number as 3561.)

I don’t have access to Deed Book 51 online, but I’ll run to the courthouse for it next time I’m in Wilson. (The Bishop L.N. Forbes mailing address for recent tax records for this property is clearly a recent clerical add-in. It’s erroneous, and serves no purpose other than to cloud the picture. The address is insufficient for mail delivery; there is no mailbox; and, in any event, both cemeteries are tax-exempt.) I’ll also need to take another look at the cemetery, which I assumed belonged to the church when I photographed it in September 2017.

Here’s a clue I missed:

James A. Kirby‘s fallen headstone shows the Odd Fellows’ linked chain symbol, marked F-L-T. Lucama Lodge was chartered in 1892, and Kirby may have been among the original members.

Hamilton Burial Garden in peril.

Wilson Times posted this article to its Facebook page a few days ago, and the furor was immediate. The condition of Hamilton Burial Garden is tragic, and, given my Lane Street Project work, I understand the pain and bewilderment family members are experiencing. I also feel deeply for the cemetery’s nominal new owner, LaMonique Hamilton, who is saddled ad infinitum with a financial burden she neither created nor sought.

In the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, when citizens were demanding that the city meet its obligations to public Vick Cemetery, opponents snapped, “Why didn’t families take better care of their loved ones? Why did they let the cemetery go?” This was ludicrous criticism in the context of a city-owned cemetery left out of the revenue stream to which African-Americans paid fees and contributed tax dollars year in, year out. This article illustrates how this response is equally useless in the context of private cemeteries. Hamilton Burial Garden today is Rountree and Odd Fellows Cemeteries 75 years ago. With the meager income from past burials long gone, few new burials, relatives scattered across the country, and owners who have either died out or are too aged or infirm to do the work themselves, the grass grows ever higher, the vines thicker, the trees taller. A single Southern summer is enough to obliterate a lawn, and no single family can stop the slide.

The issue is not unique to African-American cemeteries. Google “are perpetual care cemeteries forever” for some truly depressing reading. As shocking and painful as the realization is, the $500 or $1000 or $5000 paid for a plot ten or twenty or forty years ago cannot cover cemetery upkeep as long will be necessary. (Contrary to the article, Hamilton Burial Garden was founded around 1981, when Lamont Hamilton purchased the property. Newspaper obituaries show burials as early as February 1982.)

LaMonique Hamilton has forthrightly laid out Hamilton Burial Garden’s realities. She is seeking your ideas about how to address ongoing needs for care. How can the community help prevent another Odd Fellows?

Wilson Times, 29 July 2025.

Lane Street Project: College View Cemetery.

Though I will always be of Wilson, I have lived in Atlanta for most of my adult life. It is very much “home” for me, too, and its bottomless well of African-American culture and history often informs the way I process research and works related to Black Wide-Awake and Lane Street Project.

I’ve recently begun visiting metro Atlanta’s historic African-American burial grounds. How have they weathered exploding population growth, shifting demographics, outmigration, land loss, and other pressures? The fourth in a series — College View Cemetery, College Park, Fulton County.

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College View Cemetery is at the end of a dead-end street behind a church in a Black neighborhood a few blocks west of downtown College Park. Per Findagrave.com, the cemetery, which sprawls down into a gulch and back into brushy woods, holds at least 800 graves and “at one time served as one of the only cemeteries for African American residents in south Fulton County.” It is quasi-maintained, with small clearings opening off a central mowed pathway. The grave markers are generally in bad shape, with many broken or skewed.

The area nearest the street is well-mowed, but its grave markers and plot walls show extensive damage.

Kudzu is relentless in Georgia. It is evident that it has swallowed a significant percentage of this cemetery.

An Eldren Bailey-made marker.

Another cleared area is visible beyond mounds of kudzu.

An unmarked vault cover at the edge of the center aisle.

Burials appear to range from the 1920s to about 2000.

The Jackson plot.

Terribly, this broken burial vault is filled with water. 

The Goodrum plot resists kudzu, creeping charlie, and Japanese stiltgrass.

Around the bend, more burials.

Curiously, the large granite plaque leaning against the pole reads “Bethany Baptist Church/ Established in 1896/ Rebuilt 1945/ Present building built 1995” and lists a pastor and several officers. However, the adjacent church is Mount Calvary Missionary Baptist, founded in 1917, and there is no Bethany in College Park today.

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, July 2025.

Lane Street Project: Owl Rock Methodist Church Cemetery.

Though I will always be of Wilson, I have lived in Atlanta for most of my adult life. It is very much “home” for me, too, and is a bottomless well of African-American culture and history that often informs the way I process research and works related to Black Wide-Awake and Lane Street Project.

I’ve recently begun visiting metro Atlanta’s historic African-American burial grounds. How have they weathered exploding population growth, shifting demographics, outmigration, land loss, and other pressures? The third in a series — Owl Rock Cemetery, South Fulton, Fulton County.

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Founded in 1828, Owl Rock Methodist Church stands near the intersection of Campbellton Road and Union Road in southwest Fulton County, an area that saw significant skirmishing during the Civil War’s Battle of Atlanta. The church’s cemetery lies adjacent to the church alongside Union Road and contains two grave markers designating buried African Americans. All were or had been enslaved, but only one is named — Hasseltine Bell.

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson.

Lane Street Project: Cobb-Bethel A.M.E. Church Cemetery.

Though I will always be of Wilson, I have lived in Atlanta for most of my adult life. It is very much “home” for me, too, and is a bottomless well of African-American culture and history that often informs the way I process research and works related to Black Wide-Awake and Lane Street Project.

I’ve recently begun visiting metro Atlanta’s historic African-American burial grounds. How have they weathered exploding population growth, shifting demographics, outmigration, land loss, and other pressures? The third in a series — Cobb-Bethel A.M.E. Church Cemetery, Atlanta, Fulton County.

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Located up a short slope behind Cobb-Bethel A.M.E. Church on County Line Road, this cemetery shows signs of a recent major clean-up. The older section, up front, is clear, and small red flags indicate a survey. As you push deeper, the ground is stubbled with the stumps of saplings, and even further back, some headstones remain in dense underbrush, but the church’s commitment to the care and reclamation of this burial ground is clear.

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, May 2025.

Lane Street Project: Lincoln Cemetery.

Though I will always be of Wilson, I have lived in Atlanta for most of my adult life. It is very much “home” for me, too, and is a bottomless well of African-American culture and history that often informs the way I process research and works related to Black Wide-Awake and Lane Street Project.

I’ve recently begun visiting metro Atlanta’s historic African-American burial grounds. How have they weathered exploding population growth, shifting demographics, outmigration, land loss, and other pressures? The second in a series — Lincoln Cemetery, Atlanta, Fulton County.

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I spent the morning of July 4 not “celebrating,” but documenting the final resting places of Black Georgians. Open since 1925, Lincoln Cemetery holds more than 75,000 graves — from civil rights notables like Ralph David Abernathy, Hosea Williams, and Dorothy Lee Bolden to everyday folk like those lying beneath the lovely memorials below. The nearly two hundred photographs I took today will be uploaded to findagrave.com, the enormous online database of cemetery records and memorial information. Anyone anywhere in the world looking for a relative can search Findagrave, but they will only find what volunteers contribute.

Most of the markers in the section of Lincoln I walked were modern machine-cut headstones, but a few caught my eye.

Folk artist Eldren Bailey (1903-1987) produced untold thousands of these concrete grave markers for Black funeral homes in and around Atlanta. This simple version retains its whitewash.

Photographs by Lisa Y. Henderson, July 2025.

Lane Street Project: Oakland Cemetery.

Though I will always be of Wilson, I have lived in Atlanta for most of my adult life. It is very much “home” for me, too, and is a bottomless well of African-American culture and history that often informs the way I process research and works related to Black Wide-Awake and Lane Street Project.

I’ve recently begun visiting metro Atlanta’s historic African-American burial grounds. How have they weathered exploding population growth, shifting demographics, outmigration, land loss, and other pressures? The first in a series — Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta, Fulton County.

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I’ve lived in Atlanta more than half my life, but only recently ventured into the city’s storied Oakland Cemetery. The cemetery’s “Black Section,” founded in 1866, covers 3.5 acres and more than 12,000 known burials. (That’s less than half the size of Vick Cemetery, but three times the graves.) The grounds are now the focus of extensive restoration efforts by Historic Oakland Foundation.

In 2021 or ’22, Wilson city council voted to fund interpretive signage at Vick Cemetery, but never moved forward. Signboards like this one would help the community connect history and family to the present seemingly empty field that is Vick.

This audio cell phone tour is fantastic and is on my wildest dream list for Lane Street Project.

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, February 2025.