Surprises on Clean-Up Day

Our cemetery clean up on September 29 was fantastic; it was the first time when I was really able to step back and see a dramatic change on the property. We were so fortunate to have so many wonderful people and groups there, and also to have the assistance of the city Parks Department. When we heard ahead of time that there was going to be a grounds crew there I got pretty excited. When I saw these men at work I was beyond thrilled. They attacked the place with chainsaws, machetes, and mowers and raised the tree canopy by several feet, making a tremendous difference.

Page Jackson is full of beautiful old oak trees that spread, nearly touching the ground in some places. They are lovely to look at but do tend to cause some problems for us here in Florida, especially since we’re in the middle of hurricane season. Heavy limbs can fall and crush or topple gravestones, and since so many in the cemetery are handmade repairing them is costly IF it can be done at all. The crew thinned the trees a bit, trimming the lower limbs, and for the first time since I’ve been working there we had a clear line of sight to the back of the cemetery. We’re hoping that this will help with the crime that takes place out there and also help the police when they drive through. The very back still has a large amount of underbrush and trees that need to be removed, but this was progress.

The volunteers worked on headstone recording, cleaning, and repair, and we finished a large front area, leaving crypts and headstones gleaming in the sunshine. People tended to work in pairs and got to know each other, which was really nice to see.

At the end of the day I went to ask Robert from the city if he was about ready to call it quits. He was. But he had something to show me.

In the back section there had been what looked like a small island of trees and thicket, and the grounds crew had gone in with machetes flying. In the process of clearing the land they found five graves there dating back to the 1950’s. More than that, three of them were covered with plastic grave covers.

If you’ve never seen one (I had not) they’re definitely an oddity. These were a faded peach color and moved easily when you pressed down on them, which I did several times because I could not believe what I was looking at. I did a Google search and got all kinds of interesting things, but nothing like this. I’m wondering if it was just a trendy and inexpensive funeral item in the 50’s. Apparently it scared the crew half to death when they pressed on it and it briefly caved in before bouncing back into shape with a thump! Understandable. To date they are the only ones we’ve seen out there or in any of the surrounding cemeteries. We plan to get the funeral records just to see if there’s any info on them that could tell us anything about them or their cost. I’d love to know where they were manufactured. If you’ve seen any of them please drop me a line and give me cemetery info.

As I stood there marveling at them we found out that another volunteer was cleaning a headstone and found needles. We walked across the cemetery to her and sure enough, there were two capped syringes at the base of a grave where they had been hidden by some leaves. The police were called and came out to take photos and write a report. Apparently people use them and then bury them by a headstone that they feel they can recognize so they can go and use them again later. I’d never heard of anything like that and it gave me a shiver. I was just happy that our volunteer was safe and now we know for next time to encourage everyone to use gloves if they’re cleaning headstones. I know that people have rampant sex in this cemetery, but this was really the first time I’d seen evidence of drug use as well.

After everyone had started packing up I walked through the section we had worked in and noticed that now that they were clean, we could see that some of the crypts had been painted with what looked like a lime wash. I had never been able to see it before, but the D-2 solution from FPAN had cleared away so much grime that the brush strokes were now visible.

The final surprise was at the very front of the cemetery when volunteers found a walkway leading from the road into a family plot that had at one time been cordoned off with chain link and concrete posts. The posts were still standing, but the chain was gone. Very close by there was one headstone with 9 names on it and it looked like they may be the ones buried in that plot. Putting in a walkway would not be an easy project, and it appears to be the only plot that has one. I looked at Emily and said, “Let’s get a shovel,” meaning, let’s pull back some of the grass and reveal more of it so we can figure out where it led to and if it was made of any specific material, like brick.

Nearby, Robert raised his eyebrows in surprise. I think he thought I was going to dig somebody up for a minute there.

We left the walkway for next month, when I hope to wear knee pads and just pull the grass up by hand to reveal all of it.

Before I left I got a video of the plastic grave toppers, still amazed by them, and sent it to Jennifer, who did a ton of work that day (and on many days since then) with her son, Austin. She’d never seen them either. I can’t wait for the next visit to get some more answers. So far, Page Jackson Cemetery only raises more questions. A very sincere thank you to everyone who came out, and to Smoothie King in Lake Mary for their kind donation. Also, thank you to Pamela who does genealogy work for us from afar, your research is making a tremendous difference.

I just got back from a 2 week trip to Tampa for job training, and I was able to visit some stunning cemeteries during my free time. More on that later.

 

 

John Ivey in Lake Hill Cemetery, Orlo Vista, Florida

Warning! I have very few photos  for this post. These headstones are in a shaded area and I visited 3 times at different times of day in an attempt to get better photos, but to no avail. John Ivey just does not want to be photographed.

I’ve wanted to write about John Ivey for quite some time, but this is the first opportunity that I’ve had to kind of dive into a little research in awhile. Lake Hill is one of my favorite cemeteries in Orlando, and it’s the one that I go to after storms and hurricanes to make sure everything is still okay. When I’m there I always stop by Mr. Ivey’s grave site and check on their plot.

The cemetery used to be called the Patrick Cemetery and when you go you will see several names over and over again, Patrick, Beasley, Jernigan, and Ivey. Many of the bodies here were moved from the original Patrick cemetery to this plot in 1884, and have been here ever since. This cemetery is of historical significance because the people here were some of the first founders and pioneers in Orlando, though the place looks unassuming and simple. Other Orlando influences can be found in Greenwood Cemetery downtown, which is more ostentatious than simple Lake Hill. Aaron Jernigan has his own tidy memorial right in front of the small shed on the property (next to the flagpole). Someone regularly leaves alcohol for him, and it appears that is preferences are Wild Turkey and Jim Beam. I’m a Beam girl myself.

John Ivey (1834-1923) was a man with many jobs. First, he was husband to two different women in his life, and he had 6 children with each of them. Next, he was Orange county’s first Sherriff and tax collector. Finally, he was the elected Justice of the Peace and Coroner. Viewing their page on Find-A-Grave is wonderful, you see who married who, what their headstones look like, and how the family merged with the Patrick family by marriage. I’d love to see their family tree!

John Ivey died at 1:30 a.m. at home, and his funeral was the next day. His funeral record does not list a cause of death, but he was elderly. His occupation was listed as “Farming”, so he must have retired a gentleman farmer.

Nearby you will see the grave of Emma R. Ivey, who is supposedly the first burial at this site in 1884. She and several of the family members have beautiful hand stamped headstones with the patent at the bottom of a couple of them, and delicate floral (or maybe wheat?) motifs. I LOVE them. These are the ones I panic over during storms since there are so many trees nearby. After the last hurricane when I got to the cemetery several large branches had fallen near the stones, almost encircling them but barely touching them. These stones are similar to ones in Greenwood Cemetery downtown that have an ivy and anchor motif stamped on them. She is the daughter of John and Matilda.

If you get a chance please visit Lake Hill Cemetery. The Ivey plot is to the far right once you’re in the gates.

Last weekend was our first ‘official’ clean up at Page Jackson Cemetery and I was thrilled to see the people who showed up pour their hard work and passion into restoring the cemetery. They asked questions, vowed to come back, and scrubbed off lichen like they’d been doing it all their lives. I felt so lucky to be there on such a beautiful morning with such an incredible group of people. The next one will be this fall, and we will be advertising it early so we can get a larger group. I hope I can meet some of you.

Additionally, please take a look at what my friend Chris is doing this summer! She’s traveling to cemeteries in the Eastern U.S. in preparation for another book. I enjoyed her last book, Drawn to The Dark, which is about her travels all over the world to explore different forms of dark tourism. My favorite chapter was on the Krampus Festival in Salzberg, which sounded both terrifying and painful. Apparently, you can attend a Krampus Lauf and get whacked on the legs- hard enough to leave a welt. She also went to Italy, Japan, and (my dream trip) Transylvania. If trips like these sound like your dream vacation, be sure to check out her book!

 

Finding Bones in Cemeteries

 

The cemetery that I’m in the most is Page Jackson in Sanford, Florida. We (Gus and I) recently worked with the city and FPAN to start an Adopt a Cemetery project with them, hosting 4 clean-ups a year. Because some of the cemetery is under private ownership we will be focusing on the front section and the oldest, once called the Friendship and Union Cemetery. As soon as we have a date for our first clean up I’ll be posting, but we’re still ironing out details. However, we are VERY excited. (The section that I mention below is no longer safe to enter.)

Page Jackson is a cemetery that doesn’t follow a plan and it never has. It’s messy and sunken and doesn’t make sense. It’s horribly overgrown. In a place like that, I expect to see bones of some sort and it usually happens. We find them scattered around, almost always animal, but still always a shock when we see them. One day last year while we were walking the dirt road that curves around the cemetery we stopped and I picked up what I thought was an unusual rock, but when we looked a little closer it was actually bone. After a moment we photographed it and then tossed it back into the roadway, believing it was animal.

When I sent that photo to a friend that knows about osteological remains he asked me, “Where did you get this?” I told him. “That one’s human,” he said. As a result, I don’t toss them anymore, but instead photograph them in place and sometimes in my hand as well, and then put them right back where I found them. I keep flags in the car in case we ever find anything huge and obvious, but I’ve never had to use them. I use them for buried headstones and that kind of thing.

However, I always knew that there would be a day when I would see something so glaringly obvious in a cemetery that it would shock me. I’m a big believer in the Law of Attraction, and it seems to work with everything, including bones, because I see them all the time now in historic cemeteries. I think it’s like noticing any other thing in life, once you see it you start seeing it everywhere, whatever it is. (When I was looking to adopt a new cat all I saw were calico cats everywhere. It was like other types of cats didn’t even exist.)

On our visit to Carrolton Cemetery in New Orleans we split up, each holding an umbrella and both of us freezing but determined to check out the cemeteries. Carrolton has a lot of decayed vaults and I saw many that were caved in. I would look up, getting a feel for the way the vaults were made, and then I would look down, seeing what was in the rubble. It was a lot of slate roofing tiles and a lot of casket hardware from where they just collapsed when the roof fell. I loved seeing the hardware, I think it’s beautiful and it was interesting to see a few examples. I took a peek in one vault though and there was a rib. It didn’t exactly startle me, I just thought it was interesting. I didn’t touch it and kept walking.

A day later we went to St. Louis Cemetery Number 2, which is actually my favorite one in the city. In that one we saw a lot of bone fragments but nothing obvious, and I believed that some were most likely from animals as well. In that cemetery they seemed to be everywhere, which made it more interesting for sure. I was watching where I stepped the whole time.

On the last day we had 2 hours before we had to head to the airport for a very late flight. I was cranky and hungry, Shawn was trying to find a place to get food for me so I’d shut up, and he passed a cemetery we had gone by multiple times, but had not gone in. (I’d prefer not to say the name.) He asked if I wanted to go in, I said no. He turned in anyway and I asked what he was doing.

“Let’s just take a look, because you’re tired but I know you’ll regret it if we don’t at least look, so come on.” He parked and I got out without comment. I knew he was probably right.

I walked over to the right to look at a mausoleum. I was reading the names and dates and he suddenly appeared and asked me to follow him in a tight voice, so I did.

“Look,” he said, pointing to a grave.

I looked. We were standing by a family plot and right there on the ground, literally next to my foot, was what could only be a femur. And next to that, a hip socket. Then a piece of jaw. Then a vertebrae. It was like the person had been scrambled and thrown into the air for the parts to land wherever they fell. I just stood there, staring.

There were 3 places with bone debris in that cemetery. I’m not exactly sure how they came to have that many bones on the surface, but there they were. It wasn’t a situation where I felt compelled to take action, either, because the cemetery was scrupulously maintained and burials here are different. There wasn’t anyone hanging out, picking up bits and pieces and putting them in their trunk, and it was obvious that no one had been pulled from their grave or casket. The bones were just…there. No vandalism had taken place that I could see. While it wasn’t exactly unsettling,  it was surprising.

We looked quietly but didn’t say much or touch anything. On the way to the airport we were quiet. Both tired, both a little shocked. I have a couple of friends that will pick up anything, and I kept wondering what their reaction would have been. I didn’t feel any inclination to touch these at all.

I still wonder if I’ll react the same way if it ever happens again.

 

 

Float Like A Butterfly…

…Sting like a bee, your hands can’t hit what your eyes can’t see. 

I don’t know how many people know that Muhammad Ali’s famous line was actually coined by his cornerman, Drew Bundhini Brown, who also wrote speeches for Ali. He did a lot of things that would have been notable in his day (or even today). Brown was in an interracial marriage in the 1950’s, acted in numerous films including The Color Purple, had a son who was a bomber with the Navy, and was an all around fascinating guy. 

Amazing life, right? So when Drew Brown died in 1987 after a severe fall in his home, you would think he’d be buried with more to mark his grave than a cracked ledger stone with no name topped with hand poured ‘sculpted’ concrete. The cemetery itself is in a sad state of decline, so it’s quite possible that there was a headstone at one time. He was 59 when he died and was born in Midway, Florida. 

Supposedly, he’s there. He is buried next to his father, who has a headstone and was a veteran. His name was also Drew Brown.

There are no concrete cemetery records for Page Jackson. It’s been a free for all since it started out with the first recorded burial in 1869, so right now there’s not a way to confirm that this is Mr. Brown’s grave. But it’s what everyone says when they talk about the cemetery. A funeral record could prove it, but it’s easier to get your hands on a funeral record from the 1880’s for Page Jackson that it is for the 1980’s. If you know otherwise, call me up. There is a map of the cemetery located at the Sanford Historical Museum that supposedly shows sections of the cemetery but I don’t believe it actually serves as a cemetery map with named graves on it. If so it would be a miracle.

 So for now, let’s just enjoy the mystery together. Personally, I believe that’s his grave since there are family members nearby. If you visit the cemetery he is located on the right side of the center section near the end, but if you pass the Faithful Servant headstone you’ve gone too far. Enjoy!

Flowers at Page Jackson Cemetery

Grace, Gus, and I go out to Page Jackson together and also tend to monitor the site on our own. During this summer we spent some time researching more about the cemetery and people, and we also made plans for what we would like to do out there this winter when the heat and humidity isn’t sapping our energy so much. There’s still one gravestone I’ve yet to find from one of the first marked burials, and it’s bugging me. On the first cool day this winter that’s where I’ll be.

I went out recently with Shawn in the evening. We’ve been looking for a house in the area and many of our weekends are spent in Sanford checking out real estate. One day we were coming home later than usual; it was already getting dark. 

“Pull into the cemetery, would you?” I said as we came near, and he obliged.

My goal was to see how many cars were parked back there. We drove down the paved road until the asphalt gave way to the dirt road that leads into Page Jackson. There thankfully wasn’t anyone else there, and we could still see pretty well so we stopped and got out. 

Page Jackson doesn’t have a single flower blooming on its 11 acres. Not. One. It’s a combination of pine woods and oak trees and it looks like hell. Two grave sites are regularly visited out of 1,090, and their people leave silk flowers on them and not fresh. It’s always been like that. There is nothing here that smells except for the dirt road when it rains. That’s it. 

When I got out of the car that night there was an overwhelming smell of flowers. The smell wasn’t familiar, but it seemed like an old fashioned smell. It was heady and sweet and it felt like we were in a cloud of it. I turned to Shawn and asked if he could smell it. He could not.

I said, “The flowers. You don’t smell them?” He didn’t. He mentioned that something must be blooming but there wasn’t anything nearby or overhead. Just the cathedral of oak branches and Spanish moss. We left shortly thereafter because a couple of cars started pulling into the cemetery. One went to the house on the property, and one drove back to Shiloh cemetery.

I think it was during the same month when Gus and I went out after 11 pm to drive through and see if there were a lot of people there. That night there was not a single car, and we rolled the windows down. The crickets and frogs were loud, and I wondered if the smell would be there again but it wasn’t. 

Another night I drove through near dusk and the smell was there again, in the front section which is the oldest and covers about an acre. No matter where I went, the smell was there. It was just as strong. 

This week Grace stayed at Gus’s to pet sit and hang out in Sanford for a week, just to relax and get out of Orlando. She told me she was thinking of driving through the cemetery at night just to see what was going on out there. I told her to message me when she got back. 

A little after ten I got a frantic message saying that when she pulled past the sign to the cemetery and hit the dirt road the whole car filled with the smell of lilacs and her dog, Sherman, cowered in the seat and started growling. She stopped the car, backed up, and left immediately. She also said the smell had been overwhelmingly strong and that before she backed up she saw lights in the trees. 

“What, like flashlights?” I asked.

She shook her head no.

“Car lights, then? Headlights, maybe from someone driving through from Shiloh?”

She shook her head again. “No. It looked more like small lights, almost as if someone were holding a candle about waist high.”

Grace and I went out the next morning to look for lights. There weren’t any- no one puts grave lights out here and when you see them in the dark they tend to have a tell-tale blueish cast, and they’re close to the ground. There are 2 tiki torches on one of the maintained graves, but we looked at them and they’d never been lit. Plus, if someone held a candle in the dark you’d see a reflection of the light on their face. And grave lights don’t move. Also, we don’t have lightning bugs in this part of Florida.

We found out that Gus had the same experience one night with the smell, but not with the lights. I think it’s interesting that all of us have had the same experience and we can’t find the cause. People say the cemetery is haunted but I’d prefer to look for something in the here and now before I believe this is some ghostly activity. The place has been investigated but I never heard anyone mention the smell. Also, the smell seems to only be in the front acre. It’s not farther back in the cemetery and not in Shiloh.

Aside from that, I believe any haunting in this cemetery comes from people being in there at night with flashlights and not from ghosts, but that’s my opinion. This cemetery has a lot of activity from the human element, and while I’m certainly curious, I don’t particularly care as long as there’s no damage or more trash for us to pick up. The cemetery has been vandalized in the past and we saw the polaroids in the local museum. It was horrifying. I think it’s also worth mentioning that every other time I’ve encountered a smell in a cemetery it’s clearly been from some kind of decay and has been gag-inducing and awful.

Has anyone had a similar incident happen to them at a cemetery? I’d like to hear about it.

CRPT Review

St. Augustine is one of my favorite cities, so a couple of years ago when I heard that the next Cemetery Resource Protection Training was going to be held there I knew I’d be first in line when the registration started. The first CRPT I went to was in Deland 2 years ago and we worked in the beautiful Oakdale Cemetery, which reminded me of a tiny version of Bonaventure. The class was fairly small for that one, maybe 30 of us. This time there were over 60 and not only had our numbers grown, but the curriculum did too.

After the first one I assumed that going again would just be brushing up on my skills and making sure I was still doing everything right if I was cleaning a headstone, stumbled across remains on a cemetery visit, or attempted to transcribe a marker. But this time I learned so much from so many different presenters that my head was spinning for days. Additionally, all of my cemetery visits in the last year had really paid off. I not only understood more, but I knew where most of the photographic examples of different graves came from because I’d been there to see them myself. That was a nice feeling.

The Florida Public Archaeology Network creates this workshop and many of the presenters come on their days off to take part. This is a very committed group of people, and it seems that the people taking the workshop have the same level of commitment to their cemeteries. Some were cemetery owners, some were caretakers for church cemeteries. There were genealogists there, and members of various historical societies throughout Florida. And of course there were lots of scholars and preservationists, so it was in incredible mix of people and I learned a lot just from talking to others. Our name badges had our affiliation on them so it was easy to tell who belonged to what group. I didn’t have the blog name on my badge, in fact I only mentioned it once when I exchanged cards with someone.

This year was also different because I now have an emotional investment in Page Jackson Cemetery and all of the ensuing drama taking place around that 11 acre plot of land. Everything that I learned I was mentally applying to that cemetery, and as a result my volunteer buddies and I met up afterward and came up with a workable game plan for the next 4-6 months. It thankfully doesn’t include land clearing, weed whackers, or chain saws. While those things are important, we have come to realize that there’s really only so much that can be done and it’s the people there that matter most, so that will be our focus. (We were fortunate enough to meet at The Stranded Sailor pub in Sanford- if you’ve never been it should definitely be on your list!)

The conference took place on the gorgeous Flagler College campus and our cemetery day was spent in two of the town’s precious and well-cared for cemeteries. The Huguenot Cemetery was established in 1821 for Yellow Fever victims, and the Tolomato Cemetery, which has the oldest marked grave in Florida from 1797. The highlight of the morning for me was being able to go into the cemetery chapel there, which I’ve always wanted to see. Like every mortuary chapel I’ve been in this one definitely had that same feeling of dead space that I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, and it smelled like salt water and old plaster and had gently peeling walls. Of course I absolutely loved it.

Afterward we took a trolley ride past multiple burial spaces in the city, which was fascinating. Plus we completely filled the trolley! I had imagined a trolley draped in black like Lincoln’s funeral train, but we had a shiny bright model in green and an amazingly skilled driver who could navigate the tiny streets downtown like a champ.

At the end of the conference we signed our names to an interest sheet to start a Florida chapter for the Association for Gravestone Studies or AGS. I am very excited about this, and hope to get to their conference next year.

If you’ve never been to this conference and love cemeteries please try to get to the next one or to one of their smaller workshops during the year. You can follow them on Facebook to get information about upcoming events.

Also- if you love reading about things like this- you might like this blog. A bit of death, a bit of glamour…it’s a gloomy girl’s best friend!

Regina Bailey in Page Jackson Cemetery

We were out for a morning of picking up trash and taking photos recently in Page Jackson. It was so pretty outside, and we were all chatting and enjoying the weather and the sound of the birds in the trees. The cemetery is heavily wooded and walking around can be treacherous, but we’re committed to going out there regularly and keeping up with any changes, staying on top of the dumping, and making sure there’s not any additional vandalism. I will admit that I went at night recently just to look around. It’s a busy place when the sun goes down because we saw cars coming and going and even though I was there at night I wasn’t too happy about all of the activity. The Sanford police park an empty car outside of the cemetery as a deterrent, but it’s clearly ignored.

For the time being just being present and picking up trash is enough. Plus, the more we go out and walk around the more the paths will stay clear and people can still get around. That morning there were 3 of us on garbage duty, two of us with grabbers and one just using her hands and gloves. We were carrying lawn sized trash bags and filling them up rapidly.

Gus happened upon a piece of metal in the sandy soil and when he was unable to get it with the trash grabber he bent down to unearth it. When I glanced over I thought it was another buried can. The people who frequent this cemetery at night have a taste for Natty Light, and we see tons of those cans out there. However, it was a grave marker.

It was a standard funeral home marker, aluminum, with the name Regina Bailey on it. The dates were intact and the name of the funeral home was on it, but that’s all. The date of death was 1997.

We raised it, took a brief photo for later research, and went on about our task. Soon after we gathered up the bags of trash to dispose of them and left for the day. On the way out of the cemetery we saw an elderly man driving past, and he waved a hand at us to get us to stop. I jumped out to go speak to him.

“Do you work here?” he asked me.

I told him we just came out to pick up trash.

“I’m looking for my dad,” he said simply. “I think he was buried around here somewhere but I don’t know where, and he died in 1980.”

I looked at the ruins of the cemetery behind me with a sinking feeling. Since we started our cleaning and research efforts a few months ago we’ve realized that while 1,083 burials are listed and mostly photographed, there could potentially be up to 2,900 people buried here that nobody knows about. I thought about Regina Bailey’s buried marker and wondered how many more there were waiting to be found.

I asked for his father’s name and he gave it to me, and I looked him up on the Find A Grave app. There was no one by that name listed for the cemetery.

It REALLY bothered me on so many levels. I tried again when I got home, opening up the search to nearby cemeteries and was unable to locate the man’s father. When I said goodbye to him I recommended that he call the cemetery office or the funeral home, and he said he would try that. When we drove out of the cemetery he was by the sign looking for a number.

First, I was upset that people still come there to look for loved ones and the place is trashed. Second, what if his Dad’s marker was in there and we just hadn’t found it? What if, like Ms. Bailey’s, it was buried and no one had been able to see it for the last survey in 1998 when people photographed the cemetery?

The next weekend the three of us went back and took a better photo of Regina Bailey’s marker. In the past week I’d found her obituary online and the houses she’d lived in in Sanford. I knew a little bit about her, but there really wasn’t much information. After we took the photos I added her to Find A Grave and that was a good feeling. Now someone in her family can look her up, find her, and at least try to come see her if they feel like walking in here. The only problem is that we don’t know if that’s where she was actually buried, or if her marker was taken from another part of the cemetery and buried there in some other scenario. The area of the cemetery where her marker is located is pretty packed already, and she would technically be in the roadway.

It’s one more thing here that doesn’t make sense. If you’re interested in coming out with us in the next few weeks please feel free to email me at marnie.bench@gmail.com. It’s getting hot here already so we take it easy.

You can find us on Facebook or on Instagram @friendsofpagejackson.

We appreciate all of our followers!

Cleaning Page Jackson Cemetery

First of all, this is my 50th post! I am very excited about this and hope to continue for another 50 posts and at least another 50 new cemeteries this year. Yay!

A couple of weeks ago 4 of us met to work on picking up trash in the Page Jackson Cemetery in Sanford, Florida. Many of you who read this blog know that this is probably one of my favorite cemeteries in Central Florida. It’s never a boring trip when I visit this place and I always discover something new. I was armed that day with a new trash grabber (The Deluxe Gopher 2) that made me feel like I was 90 years old when I bought it, but it was so worth the ten dollars! For one thing, there were a lot of things laying around that I wouldn’t want to touch with my bare hands, and it also saved my back from a few days of muscle relaxers and pain. I didn’t realize that these things can not only be used for trash pick-up but also to knock weeds and branches out of the way when you’re navigating the Florida scrub brush on this property. Maybe I should get a machete too.

I knew the moment that I pulled up that it was going to be a successful morning because Ariel’s personal hearse was parked on the dirt lane and it just set the tone for the whole day, especially since it had two big dogs looking out of the back, their sweet faces staring longingly at us while framed by funereal red curtains. Maryanne was there too, and while I unloaded the cooler from my car she cheerfully informed me that she had brought disposable gloves for everyone. We all snapped them on, unloaded the trash bags, and got to work. Later in the morning Heather joined us and so between the 4 of us we had 2 bloggers, one funeral records addict (especially Carey Hand), one Hospice volunteer and educator, one funeral professional, and one person who can find anything genealogy related if she has a computer in front of her. The conversation was lively.

This is a failing cemetery, meaning that it really doesn’t matter what happens from this point forward because it will never be unearthed from the rapidly encroaching saplings and vines. My wish for this cemetery is that it be mapped every few years, and kept clean and safe for people to come and visit their loved ones even if it means a hike through some brush. That’s really all that can be expected and even that seems like too much to ask for when you look at the place and realize that this is the way it’s looked for years, and that neglect has been a part of the history here. I’d love it if it could just be under control in some way but this is Florida, and Florida plants rarely cooperate. We took our time going through, learning new graves along the way and picking up massive amounts of trash as we went, everything from pairs of shoes to (lots) of underwear and food wrappers. Tons of beer cans. Thankfully no condoms, though all of the underthings lying around in the back of the cemetery gave me a pretty good shudder anyway. Seeing Maryanne put her head into a grave to try to figure out what caused the hole in the concrete (air bubble) didn’t shock me as bad as the underwear did.

There is one grave there that has always stood out to me. It’s a plain ledger stone that’s been smashed, most likely deliberately, and is in several large pieces that jut out at odd angles like a mouthful of crooked teeth. That night I got home and looked up Find A Grave, and I went through all of the photos of the headstones until I found that marker. His name on Find A Grave is listed as Dr. Wallace Thomas Eaverly.  He was a Prescription Clerk with a third grade education. He’d worked in a drugstore pharmacy for part of his career and he died at the age of 32 in 1931, leaving a young family behind. He was somebody in the community- just like everyone else here- and it broke my heart all over again to think of his final resting place coming to this sad end, with moss growing in between the cracks in the concrete and no name for people to read as they passed by. These people built the Sanford community and Seminole County.

In the early afternoon we strolled over to Shiloh to pick up some trash back there and look around. There were some new burials and also an open grave that was covered by a piece of plywood, patiently waiting for it’s occupant to arrive. The vault was already in the ground; sand was piled on top of the grave next to it in a huge, ugly pile. This cemetery in its open field with it’s 300 plus burials is mostly clean. It’s also an African-American cemetery like Page Jackson, but if you stand at the front of the cemetery and look into the trees you see the burials in Page Jackson obscured by woods and a massive trash pile that’s grown steadily over the last year. There are burial markers right next to it, if not underneath it.

 

That night I was nursing a sunburn and itchy legs, and the next day I was actually sore from clomping all over those woods in heavy rubber boots, but it was worth it.

Our next clean-up day is planned for April 17th. It’s a Monday this time, but if you’d like to come please email me at marnie.bench@gmail.com. We’d love to see you there!

Page Jackson Cemetery Part 2

There will be many parts because I love this cemetery so much, but more than that… I love the story of this cemetery. And so I went back to take another look, and this time I saw different things that I had not noticed before.

When Heather and I pulled up to the dirt road that winds through the cemetery we saw an older man with a rake working away by himself in the central part of the cemetery. We both smiled and waved, but he just stared at us. We parked a little ways away to give him some privacy and started to wander. It was cloudy and grey, rain was threatening- and the night before we’d had a huge rainstorm that made the ground spongy. I’d worn my old horse boots just in case there was mud. There was also a lot of wind, which was awesome to hear in the trees. We’d walked down the road to Shiloh cemetery and then turned to come back when he decided to approach us. I walked up and introduced myself and found out that his name was Tom, and he’d been coming to work at this property since the mid 80’s. He was protective of the space and rightfully so, because somebody needs to stand up for this cemetery and it just so happens that recently, somebody did.

Part of the cemetery actually has an owner now, one that cares, according to what Tom told us. I’m thrilled about it and about witnessing the changes that will take place under new ownership. At least that’s my dream, that this place will start to look loved again instead of completely abandoned. There is a pile of clothes, an empty wine bottle, and an old bag of food on top of one of the graves. People are living in here. They’re having sex here. There are condoms at the back of the cemetery; they’re all over the place. Someone actually left her ID there, half buried in the mud next to the trash pile. If there was ever a cemetery that needed a locked gate, this is it. The three of us made a few jokes about what we would do if someone we dated suggested sex in a cemetery. We were cracking ourselves up coming up with pick-up lines. All of us said we’d never had anyone ever mention that to us and we couldn’t figure out why it was such a popular thing to do. I feel like if there were gates and people couldn’t drive into the back of the cemetery then a lot of this behavior would probably stop. It’s one thing to get frisky in your car, and another thing entirely to get naked on the cold ground which is potentially loaded with ticks, burrs, and thorny vines. And frankly, Shiloh and Page Jackson both look like something from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video. Whoever is going in there for that purpose is crazy.

We walked around for almost 2 hours, and my favorite thing that Tom showed us was the Hurston plot, supposedly belonging to the family of Zora Neale Hurston, the Florida writer that wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God. (Hurston is buried in Ft. Pierce.) Tom had to use his rake to pull back the vegetation to expose the graves, but there they were. I’ve been to this cemetery at least 3 times and never saw them. Who else might be there, waiting to be uncovered?

We marched back into the woods while Tom used his rake to bat vines and branches out of the way. We passed a broken crypt that looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. We passed multiple gopher tortoise homes- they like to dig under the ledger stones and kick up huge piles of sand, potentially causing problems with the grave site. We walked past one ledger stone that had a giant pile of poop on top of it from some type of large animal, God knows what it was. The woods are filled with funeral home markers and in every section you can see graves from multiple decades. There’s no logical progression when it comes to dates. I asked Tom about it.

“This was the Wild West,” he said, telling us that William Page Jackson had allowed burials by anyone at any place in the cemetery. I haven’t been able to verify too many facts about this place and the records are scant, but it seems likely that something like that happened.

I’m planning to do some research on many of the graves I photographed that day- but here’s my question…where is William Page Jackson buried? Is he here too? I can’t find him. And I’d really like to have a word with him.

Before we left I asked Heather to pose by my favorite family plot, way, WAY back in the woods. It’s completely overgrown but in the spring it’s filled with blazing pink azaleas and it’s so beautiful.

“Look like you own the place,” I told her.

She did. I think anyone that loves this place owns it. We are planning our own little clean up group soon- if you’re interested in joining us please let me know by leaving a comment or emailing me at marnie.bench@gmail.com. The main goal is just to go pick up trash. That’s it. That’s a start.

Page-Jackson Cemetery and Deep Woods OFF

This is a cemetery that I would like to draw your attention to for several reasons.

  1. It’s historic. Many Sanford pioneers are here and the plot for Zora Neale- Hurston’s family may possibly be here, though Zora herself is buried in Ft. Pierce.
  2. It needs help from the community in order to be restored and preserved; it’s in danger of being lost to the woods and the clean-up for this site is overwhelming.
  3. It is chock-full of burials and monuments…but you can’t see them unless you have a good can of bug-spray and sturdy shoes.
  4. Because of it’s delicate condition and value as a historical resource, this cemetery has really stolen my heart.
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Shiloh Cemetery entrance.

I found this cemetery when researching the Evergreen Municipal Cemetery, which is made up of five different cemeteries that have bled together throughout the years, forming an enormous arterial network of graves and monuments. Four of the cemeteries include Shiloh (maintained by a church), Restlawn and Lakeview (maintained by the city of Sanford), and the odd child… Page Jackson (not maintained by any one except volunteers). I haven’t been to the fifth one yet but it’s in there somewhere.

The ground there is spongy from burials and sunken graves are everywhere, some of them up to a couple of feet deep. Some of the ground has been cleared by a group of volunteers, revealing old headstones, some handmade, and a ground littered with funeral home markers. Most are rusted but in good condition to read since they were filled out by hand in the days before the typed paper ones. These are on thin sheets of metal from Eichelberger Funeral Home in Sanford, most from the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s. Here is what I love about the markers- most are written in the same handwriting. One person had a very long career in funeral service. The funeral home is still servicing the community under the name Wilson-Eichelberger Mortuary.

Past the cleared area you start to notice headstones in the woods and you charge in out of curiosity (if you’re like me) or sit on the dirt road and squint into the woods in fear (if you happen to be cemetery phobic). Thankfully both of the people I went with aren’t scared of anything.

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In a family plot.

The woods are separated by the dirt road, and in another section of woods I started finding entire family plots, some with concrete barriers to mark the space, some with rusting chain still looped between poles. I’ve never seen another cemetery like it. I stayed on that side for awhile noticing that there seemed to be quite a few veterans graves, and there were also crime line notices posted all over the place. People were being encouraged to call if they noticed any suspicious activity – besides me and my friends walking through the woods in astonished silence. At one point the woods thinned and then ended abruptly in front of a huge trash pile and a large, flat field full of other graves, mostly with ledger stones rather than headstones. This was Shiloh Cemetery.

After being in the shady woods coming out into the bright field seemed surreal. The original cemetery gates were gone if they ever even existed, but the brick entrance was there and you could just make out the word ‘cemetery’ in faded white paint. The graves were painted bright colors or just left in plain concrete, and one had a man’s name spray painted onto the surface to serve as his marker. There were no dates, and on my second visit there were new burials sporting flowers with bright blue ribbons resting on top of the sandy soil.

Page Jackson is an African-American cemetery and is Sanford’s first black cemetery. Many of the graves are unmarked and in my reading I read that William Page-Jackson was a gravedigger at the cemetery and allowed people to bury their dead for free for many years. Eventually the place was called after him, because he was the resident authority over the space. He did what he wanted. In another account, I read that he was a farmer that had land that adjoined the cemetery, and it was named after him for that reason. I don’t know which account is true but I suspect it’s the second one.

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Handmade stones for Sarah King.

Meanwhile, this cemetery feels like it’s waiting to be found, like it has more stories to tell. People are looking for their family members and I know that one day when the space is finally cleared, there will likely be many more surprises awaiting volunteers and families. One surprise that I got while visiting was to find a team of paranormal investigators on the property with all of their equipment. The group leader described the cemetery as “friendly”. I loved that.

Currently 6 acres of the cemetery are not owned by the city, but the rest of Evergreen is. That means no maintenance from the city. It seems impossible in this day and age that these places can come to this kind of end, but it is surprisingly easy when you’re not really sure who owns the land or who has the right to work on it.

This cemetery has a history of vandalism and because of that police patrol the area on a regular basis, including at night. There is also a house on the property that is inhabited. (“My dream house!” I gleefully told Shawn. He laughed, but I could smell the fear.) If you visit this cemetery please walk carefully, don’t go in tick season, and put back anything you touch. Also, report any vandalism to the police, though it’s doubtful you will see anything with all of the activity in the area.

I picked a funeral home marker up off the ground that was handwritten and 58 years old, still perfectly legible. I put it back knowing that that was the only thing left to tell where Mr. Frank June was, and in a few years, no one will know anyway unless something is done for this place. The next time I visit I’m planning to just bring trash bags and fill them up. Every little bit helps and I don’t own a weed whacker or a chainsaw. And did you know that if you buy the dry version of Deep Woods OFF it will actually roll off of your skin in a powdery mess if you happen to accidentally touch any part of yourself after it’s applied? I didn’t either.

For more information about the cemetery and previous efforts at clean-up and restoration, you can visit this article from 2008.

Thanks to Keila and Shawn for the great photos!