UNCW student partners with county to bring forgotten cemetery back to life
WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY-TV) — A Wilmington cemetery has been resurrected with the help of one UNCW graduate student.
Hidden at the end of a dead-end road near Oleander Drive sits what was once an abandoned, forgotten cemetery.
“So this is the headstone of Lucy Franks it’s the oldest headstone in the cemetery it was erected in 1899,” said Rachel Smith, a UNCW graduate student.
Smith got to work and resurrected lost history which had been uprooted and cracked by alleged vandals and buried by foliage.
“There were also a few that had fallen over and had been completely buried by soil and debris so it didn’t really look like a cemetery at all,” Smith said.
The cemetery, which the county requested not be named for security reasons, was first owned by Zion Chapen AME Church since 1908, but the church relocated after a Nor’easter around 1949.
Since 1999, it was considered abandoned until New Hanover County took ownership of the cemetery in 2021.
“We’ve been looking at death certificates and we know that there at least 55 people buried within this cemetery however there’s only 25 headstones so obviously there’s a pretty big difference there,” Smith said.
Since September, Smith has worked at the cemetery after Senior Lecturer, Amy Long, in the University’s environmental sciences department assigned a restoration project.
“She came to me after the project description was given she’s like ‘what do you think about me doing this’ and I said ‘I think that sounds amazing,’” Long said.
Smith partnered with Bambi Karabin in the county’s engineering department who oversees 131 cemeteries and runs an adopt-a-cemetery program.
Karabin said there are a staggering 31 cemeteries in the county that are considered abandoned.
“A person’s not truly dead until know one remembers them and so I feel like by preserving old cemeteries any cemetery you keep people alive,” Karabin said.
Smith has restored dozens of headstones and even put headstones back in their proper spot using old photographs.
Smith said two headstones which belong to Katie and Silas James, who died in 1953, were uprooted and misplaced.
“We know through death records that these two were married so I like to think that they are happy to be back next to one another,” Smith said.
While for many, this cemetery remains hidden and the history forgotten, but for Smith it’s different.
“As somebody who comes from a background in death care I definitely am a firm believer in keeping the spaces for our dead as reverent places,” Smith said.
Smith said even after she graduates, she plans to keep an eye on the cemetery, and continue her restoration of the site.
