Oakland African American Cemetery, Oakland, Florida

There are a lot of things about Orlando that I dislike, and sometimes progress is one of them. One morning when I was working at the Golf Channel I drove to work at 6:30 a.m. and saw a coyote walk out of the tall grass in a field across from our building and vanish into a nearby office complex. It was an interesting moment since I’d never seen a coyote before, and I sat in my car watching him intently. No one else was there. No one else saw it. And the next week the whole field had been mowed down and was now magically transforming into a storage facility for people to dump all of their crap that won’t fit inside their house.

Oakland Cemetery is facing similar circumstances when it comes to progress. Everything is happening around this site, and I’m not sure where the cemetery will fit in when the construction is completed. There are actually 2 Oakland Cemeteries, and when I saw the first one 2 years ago I thought I was in this one until someone told me recently that no, the other one was in the woods to the left, and that you had to just hike in.

Recently Shawn came home from work and picked me up, telling me he’d passed a cemetery we hadn’t been to yet and that he wanted to take me there. Guess which one it was? When we got to the site around 6 p.m. there were still a few construction workers milling around, but the cleared site is so immense that they never bothered us. They’re building something huge. The site starts right next to the first cemetery that I visited and is a desolate, open expanse of dirt until you look to the left and see an iron arch marking the entrance to the cemetery. We still had to hike over to it through the soft dirt, and then I jumped the fence to get in while Shawn looked around for another way. The arch said it was established in 1882.

At first I didn’t see anything noteworthy except for the fact that the site was heavily wooded and there were no markers. As I walked though I noticed a path and began to follow it. It dipped down into a little valley filled with all types of green ferns and oak trees dripping moss. because of the hour the moss was lit from the setting sun and looked like gold. It was a stunningly beautiful place for a cemetery and I stood there on the path for a few minutes, just looking around and taking in the beauty and odd peacefulness, since the cemetery is very close to the highway. After some time I began to see the odd marker here and there, nearly covered by ferns, and lots of white PVC pipe. In fact I was seeing it everywhere, and I know that each pipe indicated a burial. An archeology group had come out to work on the cemetery a few years ago and they marked the burials they could find with PVC. The Eagle Scouts have also at one time worked here, and from what I was able to find they were responsible for the arch and some previous clean up efforts.

The land was handed over to the city for maintenance and the chain link fence that surrounds the property was put up (there is an open entrance in the gate though, we saw it later on), but the fate of the cemetery is still unknown though it appears that they intend to leave it.

The cemetery is the resting place for many of Oakland’s founders, and also a lot of flu victims from 1918 are buried here. It hit this area particularly hard and many of the cemeteries in the area are a testament to this. It is believed that during that year up to 650,000 people died in America. The totals by state are staggering, and those numbers aren’t even certain. Most likely the numbers were higher. There is once cemetery on Orange Avenue here that is full of flu victims, and the cemetery is actually quite small. I remember reading one account of four funerals being held in one day. For a growing community it would have been devastating.

I used to feel extremely emotional over sites like this, still do sometimes. But I think after the past couple of years of looking for cemeteries that are long gone and doing a lot of reading that I feel more detached. You can stop people from doing what they’re going to do and doing it without regard for others. It’s the way things are now. It doesn’t make the site or the people buried there any less important. They’re still a part of our past and I hope this site will be preserved.

When we got back to the car Shawn spent a good five minutes pulling pernicious little stickers off of me. I was covered.

 

Heavenly Bodies at Eau Gallie Cemetery, Melbourne, Florida

First a little bit of business. To the person who ran a search on my site for…and I quote… “pictures of 14 plus naked girls”, I believe that you are on the wrong site. We all wear our clothes around here, sir. I always read the search terms every week to see what people are looking for and I’ve gotten some good tips for cemeteries to visit, but not this time.

It was extremely hot the day that Shawn and I decided to head to Melbourne just to get out of the house and see what was over there. I wasn’t super thrilled with the area, but I’ll admit that I also didn’t really know where to go or what to see. We did go to several cemeteries, and Eau Gallie was one of my favorites. The sign in front said “Welcome! Booker T. Washington Neighborhood”. After some research I found out that it appears to be part of a neighborhood development plan, and there is actually a whole section of Melbourne that is part of this. I had read online from some ghost hunter that this was in a bad neighborhood but I never saw any evidence of that. The surrounding areas were clean and busy and the cemetery itself was in perfect condition. I would have gone in by myself and felt totally comfortable.

The cemetery is large and well designed with a roundabout in the center, a common design, with the cemetery moving out from the circle into quadrants. It had the most beautiful trees and the plushest grass I’d ever seen in a cemetery though, and for that alone it was worth getting out for a walk. Besides its beauty, there is one other thing that stood out in this cemetery. It is full of angels. The people who come back to visit their loved ones tend to leave angels on the graves, and there were so many everywhere I looked. I felt well protected while we were there! There was even a huge modern headstone with a crouching angel leaning over it, which is a style I’ve also seen in Greenwood Cemetery here in Orlando.

The cemetery was established in 1902 so it’s certainly not the oldest one I’ve been to, but it’s worth a visit. The surrounding area used to be a city called Eua Gallie, and the cemetery was operated by that city at one time until it just became part of Melbourne in 1969. It appears to still be an active cemetery and has about 1400 burials, though we didn’t see any new graves while we were there.

The grave of John P. McMillan was my favorite one that we saw and was also very poignant. It was a white marble obelisk with the Woodmen of the World symbol on it, and the dates told the story. Born 1896, died 1918. He gave his life for his country is the epitaph. I don’t see too many first World War veteran’s graves, or it could be that when I see the date 1918 I tend to first think of the beginning of the Spanish Flu pandemic. But this grave hit me hard, not only because the man was so young when he died, but to die at the end of the war when he had survived thus far seemed especially sad.

It was too hot to be walking around but we had one more cemetery to visit- the Shady Oaks African American cemetery nearby. More on that one soon. You should visit Eau Gallie if you’re in the Melbourne area. If you like taking photos in cemeteries, you can’t find a better subject. If you like the paranormal, everything I’ve read indicates that this is the place to be. However, this cemetery seemed very quiet and peaceful to me.

Beulah Cemetery in Winter Garden, Florida

On this particular day I remembered to wear my Converse for the first time. When I was spending a lot of time with horses I had boots for all occasions- boots to run in, ride in, muck stables in, and two pairs for winter since I hate having cold feet. Now that I spend a lot of time in cemeteries, I frequently forget to put on appropriate footwear. I keep rubber boots in my car, but I forgot about them on the day that I grazed a plant in St. Augustine that caused the top of my foot to form welts and blisters over a period of three painful days. I keep converse in Shawn’s Jeep but I also forgot to put them on the day that I got stung by ground bees in New Smyrna. So on this day I was very proud of myself for stopping outside of the cemetery gates to put on closed-toe shoes. Most Florida cemeteries seem to have a lot of burrs and this cemetery is near water so there’s also the possibility of snakes.

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The sign states that Beulah Cemetery was started in 1866, and the earliest burial that I could find was from that year, Andrew Jackson Dunaway. He was an orange farmer, as many of the families in this area were. Mr. Dunaway appears to have been the start of the cemetery, but much of his family is also there. Not only was he enlisted in 1861 as a private in the Civil War, he was twice married and had a huge family. If you walk from the cemetery entrance toward the lake you will notice a humble handmade marker facing the water that says Mrs. America Keen. The rest of his children had pretty standard names, so she stood out to me. In 1860 she was one year old, and I was unable to find much information on her. His children were basically farm labor if they were men or housekeepers if they were women. That’s just the way it was.

 

The census records from the 1860’s that show this family have their neighbors listed as farmers, one that was both a farmer and the local sheriff, one doctor, and one man from Ireland whose occupation was listed as “ditches”. It was fascinating reading. Apparently, this cemetery served the Beulah settlement which was also called the Reaves settlement- Reaves is a name that you see many times in the cemetery. The Beulah Baptist Church is down the road and they maintain this cemetery.

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This cemetery has several death dates on tombstones that correspond with the Spanish Flu epidemic (1918-1919). Additionally, many of the headstones to the left are artfully rendered and quite detailed. Some of the motifs include a harp, a star, the gates of heaven (always!), and one white stone with carved flowers at the top which is one of my favorites.

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The cemetery has 2 above ground crypts belonging to James and Matilda O’Berry, who died 20 years apart, with Matilda dying first. Shawn and I stood there for a moment staring at them, wondering aloud what it would be like to die 20 years after your spouse. She was from Georgia, he was born in Florida, and they had 12 children in their 25 years of marriage. He was also an orange farmer. Matilda’s funeral was done  by the Carey-Hand funeral home and cost 130 dollars and was paid for in 2 payments (1921). Her death notice was printed in 2 papers but I was unable to locate them. When James passed away in 1941 the doctor that attended him was also the Justice of the Peace. It appears that the crypt was added when James died in 1941, since his funeral record includes a charge for masonry and labor and was considerably more expensive than Matilda’s funeral.

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It’s a beautiful cemetery to walk through, not only because of the majestic trees and the breeze from the lake, but also because every time I visit I see birds that live near the water, and the last time I visited there was a baby turtle shell on top of a grave.  It was no bigger than the palm of my hand and still a deep, mossy green color.

I left it there.

 

The Church in the Woods

Way, way back in the woods in Marion County.

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Cedar Grove Methodist Church.

You turn off of the 2 lane highway onto a dirt road that goes a mile back into the Florida scrub. There’s no other turnoffs, no driveways, nothing to show that you’re actually going…somewhere. And then when you’re starting to get all sweaty and worried about how in the heck you’re supposed to turn your car around in the middle of this forest- a clearing appears and there in the middle of it is the cutest little Methodist church you’ve ever seen, and there’s a cemetery behind it.

This church is a well protected site and there are signs everywhere saying that you’re on camera. So behave yourself. We did, for once. The church has a charmingly misspelled sign that reads Cedar Grove Cemetary, which is one of my pet peeves especially since it’s showing up in glaring red as I write this. However, that’s the only fault I could find with this beautiful place. It was well maintained and we never saw another soul as we looked around late one Sunday afternoon. This was a mission church and they have owned the cemetery since 1860. It appears that the church is most likely without running water since there is an outhouse (not even kidding) and a hand pump outside, which Shawn gleefully tried. Interment.net states that the church is no longer in use, and that the cemetery is full. A second source says that this is not the original church; this one was built around 1936 because the first one from 1860 burned down.

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Outhouse. No plumbing inside, apparently.

Well that just sucks. It’s one of the things that I don’t like about visiting historical sites. Everything has burned to the ground at least one time already.

My favorite stone was a hand-stamped one made of pale yellow stone for Annie Clara Brass, who was just a few month old when she died. Several of the stones in the cemetery were made by the same hand, and they’re beautiful. The Brass family also lost another daughter in 1900, Nina, who was 7 months old. Facts like these make my heart feel heavy when researching these sites. We went recently to the Powell Cemetery on Orange Avenue in Orlando and the dates made it clear just how many people there died from the Spanish Flu. I’m imaginative and these events are easy for me to picture, and then sometimes feel. Three people buried in Powell Cemetery died within one day of each other. It must have been horrible to witness in a small community.

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Anna Clara’s grave in Cedar Grove.

Another cemetery resident is Archie Brass, who was a local farmer. He married twice, first to Delia, who died, and later to Pennie (Pennie Brass. What a name!) who he later divorced. Delia is buried in the cemetery but Pennie is not. His draft records from 1917 indicate that he was ‘stout’ and had brown eyes and black hair. He was on that land for at least 30 years according to the census- and both of his parents were born in Florida as well.

This area is considered the Gaiter settlement, and nearby was Camp Izard, site of a siege between 1500 Seminole Indians and General Gaines in 1836 which lasted nearly 2 weeks. In 1842 the site was abandoned. Florida became a state in 1845, a few years after the bloodbath. 15 years later the original church was erected on this site.

When we wandered through that day I looked down and found myself standing in a pile of white bones. This would be odd but it’s actually the second time this has happened to me in a cemetery, the first time was in Oakland Cemetery and the victim was a rooster that had been killed some time ago, the tiny bones of the neck and spine looked at first like teeth until I noticed the feathers and leg bones scattered everywhere. This time it was a deer that had died and had completely decomposed down to the bone. The spine was still arced in a gentle curve on top of the pine needles, the leg bones were thick and sturdy and for a few minutes I couldn’t figure out what it was. The jawbone still had the delicate teeth attached. The skull was sadly missing. I sent a photo to a friend of mine that has done a lot of biology work for his art and he pronounced, “It’s a deer”. It had been there undisturbed for so long that I would have wondered if people ever visited, except that the property had been raked and weeded.

If you find yourself in Marion County near Dunnellon anytime soon, look this place up. There’s so much history here that it’s hard to write the post in a concise manner. Just go.