Category: Sanford

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.

 

 

Seneca Cemetery in Lake County

Maryanne and I turned to look at each other in front of the locked cattle gate blocking our path. It was so hot that we’d both pulled our hair back, and hers was wet and slicked back from her face. I could feel mine sticking to the back of my neck, so I pulled it down and then put it back up into a higher ponytail so it wouldn’t be touching me at all. We eyed the gate warily. Hopping one in your 20’s is one thing. In your 40’s, it can be a challenge. We were already tired and sunburned from trying to navigate another cemetery earlier that day.

We conquered it and made it over, Maryanne laughing because she was so short that her toes wouldn’t reach anything once she had her leg over the top. She floated for a moment, a foot twirling in the hot air before she finally found the next rung. I’m so long-legged that it was just up and over for me, but I didn’t like the wobble of the gate so I went slowly, trying to keep it from moving too much. We started the walk into the cemetery, which we were unable to see from where we’d parked.

The road in had been paved, but heat and lack of maintenance had caused the asphalt to buckle over and over again, and it would have been horrible if not impossible to drive on it. I was in sandals  and wished for something more substantial, since there were weeds coming up out of the cracks and we were surrounded by a grassy field. Up ahead the road curved slightly, and we were able to make out grave sites and a small building. I prayed for it to be a mausoleum. The air was literally wet, and we went slower because it was too hot to breathe easily. Florida in June is brutal. Florida in the middle of an open field in June is just stupid. Thankfully we’d hydrated with huge Big Gulps on the way.

When we got closer we saw that it was actually a small concrete block shed, but the graves were incredible, peeking from the high grass everywhere we looked. Many were modern, which surprised me. We were in the middle of nowhere and I had expected this to be a very old cemetery with no modern additions. But I actually liked it that it was still in use.

In the distance we could hear a rhythmic squeaking noise and as we got closer we saw a horse being exercised on the adjoining property at the back. He wasn’t able to stop walking, but he watched us curiously every time he made a turn, his eyes shaded with a fly mask but his face always turned toward us. On the property to the right there were two mares and their foals, all in fly masks, and they walked close to the fence and stared at us. I stopped to speak to them; I can’t pass a horse without speaking.

At the front of the property was a beautiful black granite headstone in a plot surrounded by a perfectly white picket fence. The plot was large but there was just the one headstone, and in the middle of the bright green grass it was striking. As I stood looking at Mr. Smith’s marker I heard a rumble and noticed that the sky ahead was darkening. Then when I looked back at the headstone another horse appeared, this time right behind the headstone in the adjoining field. His stance seemed almost protective, so I acknowledged him and kept walking.

The cemetery was a loop design with most of the graves placed outside of the central circle. I stopped at the largest headstone I saw and read that it belonged to Viola Alter and her daughter. Down at the bottom it read ‘Mother and babe!” They had died in 1885. Maryanne appeared next to me and we contemplated it together.

“I wonder what happened?” I mused. My mind always goes to the epidemics in the area, but this should have been obvious.

“Mother and babe”

“Childbirth,” she said, looking straight at me. I shivered despite the heat. Childbirth has always been one of those things that I can’t even think about, and dying in childbirth has always been a huge fear of mine. Sometimes I think it’s why I don’t have children. The thunder rumbled again. The headstone had at one time held a piece of ornamental ironwork, but it was long gone, with just the small rusted pieces of the frame sticking out of the marble. There was a perfect, ornate floral wreath carved into the stone, and I looked for a maker’s mark but there was none, so I stood wondering if this stone had been brought down the St. John’s from Charleston like so many others in the area.

I thought before I started researching the cemetery that Viola would be the oldest burial, but she wasn’t. It looks like it was a Jane Sower in 1845, which really surprised me. I think because I compare everything to Page Jackson, and this place was already in use 40 years before Mister Jackson started waving at people as they passed by his land with a coffin in a donkey cart. Eustis and Sanford were connected by the St. John’s and both were used by steamboats as ports, because they were both agricultural communities. Sanford grew celery and Eustis was known for oranges.

I tried to look up Jane Sower but was unable to find her in the census records from 1830 or 1840. The cemetery site says it was established in 1884 and it had a busy period all through the 1920’s.

The cemetery is small, with only 157 burials to date, and almost all of them have been photographed. There used to be a group that had something called an ‘open gate day’ where you could come in and help with maintenance, but the last date was from 2011, which made me a little bit sad. It’s a beautiful place. There must be a group still coming out periodically but it would be nice if they still recorded their work on the site. There’s a huge dead tree near Viola’s grave that needs to come down, it’s dropping limbs already and endangering some old gravestones. The tree, however, looked so much like the blog logo that I had Maryanne take my photo with it.

Pretty soon we saw lightning in the black clouds that were getting closer and closer, and the energy in the air changed from benign to fierce. The mares went and stood under their shelter with their young. We clambered back over the gate and left, saying we’d come back this fall when it wasn’t so hot- and when I had on boots. We had just pulled out of the drive when the rain started pelting the windshield.

I don’t get out to Lake County much but there are 2 other cemeteries in Eustis that I want to get to, so I’ll be going back soon.

 

 

St. Luke’s Cemetery, Oviedo, Florida

We drove out to St. Luke’s on a scorching day in June after and equally scorching trip out to Lukas Nursery. The greenhouses, despite their fans, were intolerable. I could feel my skin burning while we were on all of the outdoor paths. Why I decided that we should go to St. Luke’s as well is beyond me, but I did, and it was not the best decision.

St. Luke’s is a small, Lutheran church cemetery with about 790 burials. It’s a little odd, honestly. There are no outstanding monuments, much of what you see is memorial flat markers. It’s a grassy field, which is beautiful and peaceful, but I can see where they would really have to stay on top of their maintenance since the grass was so perfect and thick. (Rare for Florida, where cemeteries tend to be sandy and have sparse grass at this time of year.)

I have to drive by this cemetery every week while I’m working, and it always looked interesting from the road so I made a note to visit. But recently I met an interesting woman and we started talking about cemeteries. She told me that she used to come to this one when she was in high school late at night because it was supposed to be haunted. There was supposedly a woman carrying a lantern (wearing white- what else?!) who could be seen late at night wandering through the graves. She never saw her. She also mentioned the fog that appears at night in the area that is always in the same specific spot (Chapman Road, I believe.)

Hogwash. Ya’ll know what I think of these stories by now.

But, she did say that they used to break into the chapel on the property and sit around in there and that it was spooky. I thought that it was actually a caretaker’s cottage, so I was most interested in seeing that. According to hauntedplaces.org some people have reported feeling like they can’t breathe inside the chapel or have come out covered with scratches and welts. Well, I’ll be frank, I did come off of their porch covered with scratches and welts but it was from the numerous mosquito bites that I got on the property. Paranormalghostsociety.org did a nice historical write up about the history of the place (used to be celery fields, just like Sanford) so if you’re interested you might take a look at that before going out there.

The chapel itself is quite unique and looks more like a tiny house. Inside was clear glass windows and old, well-polished pews to seat maybe 20 people. Maybe. The door was weathered and warped. It was my favorite feature on the property.

I’ll be honest. I do believe in ghosts, but I do get tired of different versions of the same story popping up all over Central Florida. That is what I find tiresome. The ghost is always wearing white. It’s almost always a female spirit. There is generally a lantern or candle involved. There is usually little explanation of who the ghost might be or why they’re haunting the area (usually a cemetery). So with that said, I’d like to hear some stories about restless male spirits for a change. One was mentioned in the linked article, a man that walks up and down the road carrying a suitcase.

I would definitely like to meet him.

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!

Upsala Swedish Cemetery in Sanford, Florida

I’m going to start by saying this land is for sale, which is the one thing guaranteed to make me freak out when it comes to historic cemeteries. It’s not cheap either; the listing price is $225,000 and they say it could potentially hold a 6000 square foot church facility. I’m not so sure about this though. The site is small, and used to be the location for one of the Swedish churches in the area (there is another one just down the road that you can see) but of course it burned down to the ground as these beautiful old buildings are wont to do. The Swedish came here to work on the citrus groves as part of Henry Sanford’s enterprising vision. The church on this site was called the Scandinavian Society Lutheran Church. There was also a meeting house and a small cemetery for what is considered the largest Swedish community in Florida at that time.

Churches in the late 1800’s were built for small communities and the churches were small too, not like the behemoths built for today’s modern congregations. Modern churches seem to need a gigantic place for kids, a teen center, a cafe, and a place for meetings like AA, Al Anon, and, Financial Peace University. I’ll be honest and say that I’m never comfortable going to these gigantic complexes because I feel like I’m headed to a rock concert rather than…church. With that said, this is not a property that could house that kind of facility plus parking. It has beautiful old oak trees and the property is deep but not wide. The cemetery is in the back, and it’s extremely overgrown. Find A Grave says there are 42 burials.

When I first heard about this cemetery I was told that when I got there that I should bend over and look under all of the bushes that I was able to get near. I thought this was really odd, but when I marched in that day in my boots I was determined to do it to see what my informant had been talking about. And she was right. The bushes had at one time been ornamental plantings on the graves- but now they were as tall as I am and huge. I bent over to look at the base of one, pushing a few branches out of the way, and I saw a couple of headstones. The shrubs had grown up around them and then overtaken them. After that I was creeping around bent double like I was having a hard day of cramps, trying to look into all of the shrubbery. There were more obscured headstones everywhere I looked.

This cemetery backs up to a subdivision and someone has made a well used path into the cemetery where they’ve created a sort of outdoor man-cave. There was a little trash, mostly cans and snack wrappers, and a few plastic chairs and a stone bench set up in a kind of circle. Somebody hangs out here a lot. I wonder if they might bring a rake sometime and get to work.

The cemetery also has an area that is full of thick ferns and there is lots of kudzu and vines in the trees. The property itself is magical and I sincerely wish that I could buy it and just restore the cemetery and call it a done deal. And believe me, there was a part of me that reasoned that I don’t have a mortgage payment and why not just buy it, but I know better.

So I’ve decided I’m going to ask Santa for it this year instead.

There is a lot of information about this community online and also a few nice historical markers in the area, so it’s worth a visit. You can’t miss the gigantic for sale sign at the front of the property, just park and then walk straight back. I’d advise boots though and be cautious about bees if you’re going to paw through bushes looking for headstones.

On June 1st I’ll be in St. Augustine for the CRPT conference on cemetery preservation and I am SO excited! The one I went to 2 years ago is what prompted me to start this blog so I hope after this one I’ll be motivated to start a podcast (thanks @collegeparkmom!), buy my own cemetery, write a book, or something else industrious. If you’re local and you want to go I believe there is still space left and it’s a 2 day conference for 60 bucks. You can’t beat it for everything that you’ll learn.

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 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!