POSSIBLE BLACK BURIALS AT
CAMPGROUND CEMETERY

            Many antebellum church cemeteries in the south had a black section, and Campground probably did too. The church itself dates to the early 1840s but the cemetery is older. The possible black graves were marked until the late 1950s. At the time the cemetery was smaller than it is now, the circle drive had not been built, cedar trees still marked the graves of Nancy Rushing and her son Calvin, most fieldstones were still upright, and the woods to the west began immediately behind the grave of Calvin Rushing. In the northwest corner of the cemetery were two rows of 8-10 small fieldstones, right on the edge of the woods. The fieldstones were smaller than those used elsewhere. This would have been the part of the cemetery farthest from the nineteenth century log church. Small fieldstones at the back of the cemetery is typical of black burials at mixed-race church cemeteries.

           These two rows of fieldstones disappeared when all the fieldstones in the cemetery were laid flat and countersunk to make mowing easier, and all trace of any graves disappeared when the woods were cut back to expand the cemetery. These two rows were located approximately where the White family markers were erected in the 1990s.

David Donahue, November 2004

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