BUNCHES CHAPEL
(Slave Burials)

            Bunches Chapel Cemetery is a very old cemetery in the Busselltown community of Decatur County. The earliest death date recorded on a carved marker is 1827. Bunches Chapel is the unnamed cemetery indicated on Goodin Branch on the U.S.G.S. Jeanette quadrangle (1986). At some point in the past concrete slabs were erected to mark burials without other identifying markers. There are close to 100 of these. About 30 other graves are marked with small concrete blocks flush to the ground, with fieldstones (eight survive), or by some other method.

            While updating this cemetery in March 2003, I met Paul D. Moore. In out conversation about the cemetery he mentioned that slaves were buried here. The seven southern-most concrete slabs, lowest burials on the hill and near the cemetery gate (when there was a fence) are the burial locations of slaves.

David Donahue, October 2003

 

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