While in Huntsville, AL, we visited the Historic Slave Cemetery. There were no individual gravestones but it is a commemoration of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of slaves buried there. "On September 3, 1818, the Huntsville City Commissioners purchased two acres of land from Leroy Pope for a "burying ground" for slaves. This cemetery was located within the NE quarter of Section 1, Township 4, Range 1 West of the Base of the Meridian. It was affectionately known as "Georgia" within the black community. The cemetery continued to be used from 1818 until 1870 when Glenwood Cemetery was designated as the city's burial ground for African Americans. No known records have survived" - Alabama Historical Association, 2001.
Across the field from there is the Glenwood Cemetery. 1,148 gravestones mark burial sites of slaves as well as prominent black citizens. It is estimated that as many as 9,000 or 10,000 unmarked burial sites remain to be identified. In 1993 students of the Academy of Science and Foreign Language began a project to uncover the cemetery's secrets. If you'd like to read more about this project click here.
Mom spent the afternoon at Glenwood uploading photos to findagrave.com before taking me to a dog park where I ran and ran and ran. I loved spending time with the other dogs. I even found a human who threw a ball for about an hour. I haven't quite figured out that I'm supposed to bring it back. It was much easier to train the human to come get it where I dropped it. He didn't quite understand what he was supposed to do at first, but when I brought the ball half way back and dropped it, I looked at him, then at the ball, then back at him, then at the ball. He finally figured out he was supposed to come get it and throw it again. After I had him trained we had great fun together.
During one conversation Mom mentioned that she goes to cemeteries and photographs the grave sites for findagrave.com. Cindy was very interested in the why's and how's of this so Mom invited her to go with her the next day. They went to Anderson Cemetery in Anderson and photographed 73 grave stones. They even found a grave stone that had a different name than the listed one had but was clearly the same person. Another several had different dates than what was on the listing, and 2 of them had gravestones for the same person in 2 different locations, one the original and the other a newer one. Mom said doing this work is like being a detective. Sometimes you have to follow the clues to lead you to the correct person. Mom showed Cindy how to upload the photos to findagrave.com and set Cindy up with her own findagrave user name.
Cindy was also very interested in family history work so Mom set her up with an account on familysearch.org and showed her how to enter information on her ancestors. Cindy has a book of genealogy on her father's ancestors which will keep her busy for a long time. Mom told her that if she goes back far enough she will most likely tie in to someone else's research which will bring her back even further. Sure enough, she entered her grandfather, then Mom showed her how to find that person, and that connected to someone's else's family tree that went all the way back to the 1400s in France!
Our time there came to an end and we said goodbye to our new best friends as we moved on to our new site at Nachez Trace RV Park in Hohenwald, TN. This is about an hour from Nashville so I'm sure we'll be visiting there. It's also about an hour ride to visit some dear friends in Holladay, TN, who were Mom's mentor when she first got sheep. They're in the middle of lambing season so maybe Mom will get a chance to help deliver some lambs.
--Cruz
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