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!

 

The Tiny Vineland Cemetery

“It’s on this road somewhere,” said Shawn, driving slowly down a road that was becoming increasingly bumpy and derelict. There were big potholes here and there and people had clearly been dumping trash for years, as well as actually camping in the woods on either side of the road and using the trees as clotheslines.

This land was supposedly owned by a corporation, so if we walked into the woods we would be trespassing, but I also knew there was no way I was walking into the woods unless we knew for certain that the cemetery was still there. If it was there, I was going in. And I couldn’t see a thing except for trees and palmettos.IMG_2359

Shawn pointed past me, his arm nearly touching my face as he reached out and slammed on the brakes. “I bet that’s it!”

Sure enough, in the heavy woods there was a white object rising up out of the scrub. We could just make out the top of an obelisk. I hopped out of the car and told Shawn I’d be right back. I walked into the woods down a leaf covered path someone had made, and that we had completely missed when we were driving past. The path was filled with litter, but sure enough, just a few feet in there was a black fence, an obelisk, and two veteran’s gravestones. I ran back to get Shawn.

The scrub had grown so close to this fence (supposedly erected by the Eagle Scouts a few years ago) that I had to walk sideways to get to the gate (which they placed at the end of the site and not right off the path, which would actually make sense) and go inside. All the research that I did said that there were only a few burials here, and the families had come back for two of the headstones and moved them, then left these last two alone in the woods. Some of the burials were unmarked so it’s not certain exactly how many people were buried here.

It was a sad resting place, but I’m sure that back in the 30’s when Vineland, Florida was all about oranges and industry it must have been nice. For us it was a special find, and it’s good to know that someone cared enough to erect the fence and the monument to keep the woods from taking over the space, even though I feel like this cemetery will be lost anyway in a few years.

Cemetery information can be found here if you would like to visit. Please note that some of the dirt roads around there have no trespassing signs near homesteads lived in by people who look like they mean what they say. Don’t get lost. Don’t drive around more.

And sorry about the photos, my phone was dead and Shawn’s photos don’t always translate well in WordPress.

Goal for the year=Fancy New DSLR Camera.

San Sebastian/Pinehurst Cemetery on Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s morning was cold this year, but my boyfriend and I woke up in my favorite city, congratulated ourselves on our amazing good fortune at being together, and got ready for a morning in the local cemeteries. The fact that he was willing to go cemetery hopping with me on such a day probably proved that he liked me very much indeed, and we dressed warmly for the occasion and he seemed as excited as I was to be going out. On Valentine’s Day. To look at  graveyard. God bless him.

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Front entrance to Pinehurst/ San Sebastian.

St. Augustine has two cemeteries in the old city that are off limits, so basically if you’re a tapophile you get to hang over the gates with your camera and drool, but that’s it. One of them is the Old Huguenot Cemetery across from the crumbling fort, Castillo de San Marcos, and the other is down a side street nearby, close to the Old Pharmacy turned Potter’s Wax Museum (I’m cringing as I type this) called the Tolomato Cemetery. Both are fiercely protected, and rightly so. A bit farther away is the Mission de Nombre Dios which is the site of the first church service in St. Augustine, and it fortunately has a beautiful cemetery accessible to anyone who wishes to walk through.

However, on this particular morning we were looking for something farther away from the city, an African-American cemetery that was abandoned until recent years. It’s been in several news articles over the years and during the past few months it has been in the caring hands of volunteers and archaeologists as they record the cemetery and hopefully, continue restoration. I really wanted to see it, so we headed to Starbucks and hit the road with hot beverages in our cold hands.

The San Sebastian Pinehurst cemeteries are on one plot of land that reaches pretty far back into the woods. It is marked with a sign and a beaten down chain link fence surrounds the property. The fence had literally been stomped down or run over at some point, so it was just a matter of us stepping over it to enter and we walked right past the gates to do this. The breeze was chilly on my face, and I could smell the crisp scent of wood smoke in the air. Nearby there was a rooster crowing, and I could hear voices coming from the small church across the street as they got ready for their Sunday services. No one seemed to mind that we were there.

As we started our walk around I noticed that there was damage, but I didn’t notice outright vandalism anywhere, such as smashed headstones or monuments that were pushed over. There was a lot of trash though. All of the stones seemed to be fairly low to the ground, and many of them were sunk deep into the soil, leaving just a few inches above ground to read. The deeper in we walked, the more it started to look as if the whole cemetery had been victim to some sort of flood that caused the stones to sink. So many of the graves had also weathered down to fairly deep pits- I’d never seen that kind of sinking in a graveyard. I was grateful for the knee high boots I was wearing. I got stuck in branches several times and the leaf cover was thick. I also sank in the sandy soil once or twice.FullSizeRender (8)

I assumed a lot of the damage was due to the sand, years of neglect, and the presence of many handmade headstones that may not have been placed with the same stability as their funeral home ordered counterparts. The cemetery was also full of graves with ledger stones, concrete pieces the size of the grave that lay on top of the soil. Many of these stones had come from the same place, they were identical and had a black laurel wreath on them or other decorations, like a cross. Many of the name plates were unreadable, just like the gravestones. A lot of the stones had weathered conch shells on top of them, bleached white by decades of sun and rain.

There were two headstones that caught my eye as I looked around. One was a child’s small stone that was near a tree and had toppled over. Ronnie A. Bellamy, it read, 1959-1962. Three years old. The epitaph said “We will meet in the morning.” I photographed it, but later when I looked it up on Find A Grave there was no Ronnie Bellamy listed for either Pinehurst or San Sebastian cemeteries. I also tried Ancestry, and a search of the nearby Evergreen Cemetery with no luck other than a recorded death index.

The other stone was handmade and attracted me because it had very distinct lettering, it stood out because it was so readable, unlike many of the other headstones. Christine Clayborne 1882-1954. I took a careful photo and told myself I’d look her up when I had the time.

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Ronnie Bellamy.

At the back of the cemetery we noticed that the chain link fence bordered the huge and ostentatiously beautiful Evergreen cemetery that we passed on the way in. Standing there in the dilapidated cemetery looking at all of the gleaming white marble on the other side was an interesting feeling. I sincerely hope that they’re able to save this cemetery from further ruin, it’s no less valid or beautiful than the other one with its angels and obelisks.FullSizeRender (9)

We turned around and right in front of us was a new grave. It startled the hell out of me, the cemetery seemed like it was long past allowing new burials, but there it was, bright and shiny. The roses were fresh and pink, the carnations didn’t have a spot of brown on them, and the bows were still crisp. It was a woman or a young girl, judging by the arrangements. They had laid the ledger stone and coarse sand was piled all around, making it look like a construction site. I looked over my shoulder at the way into the cemetery and thought that they must have done some fancy driving to get this person back here. It would be very easy to drive over a grave in this place and with such heavy leaf cover it would be hard to tell where any road existed aside from the one in the middle of the property. There was no name or funeral home marker.

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Evergreen Cemetery is nearby.

On the way toward the front we stopped at two brick vaults (I usually refer to them as pizza-ovens because that’s what they remind me of). The face of one of them had fallen over and I bent down to see if it had been pried off or had just fallen over from age. It appeared to be the latter, and the dark, wet smell of earth and mold coming from the stones made me stand and step back. At the front of the cemetery was a grave with a low wall surrounding it that held shells, tin cans rusted brown, soda bottles, a CD with writing on it, pieces of brick and bits of glass. It was an epic collection of momentos. I couldn’t find a name on any of the stones nearby.

As we were leaving we drove through Evergreen and marveled at the difference. It was nicely designed and had many beautiful monuments, including the grave of Randolph Caldecott, the English artist that the Caldecott award is named after. While pretty, it didn’t interest me the way San Sebastian did. I was quiet as we drove off to our lunch reservation at La Pentola,  still wondering about the fate of the cemetery we had wandered through. I was grateful for the people choosing to work on it.

If you visit please tread carefully and I’d advise you not to touch too much since many of the stones are delicate.

Also, you’ll need some good shoes. 

And it turns out that Shawn did indeed like me, because he asked me to marry him that day and I accepted his proposal. Thankfully, he asked me on the beach and not in the cemetery. He is aware that cemetery weddings are popular, and he is also aware that while that interests me, I’m not going to make him do it.

**Postscript- I found out two weeks ago that this cemetery has been officially closed for new burials and the funeral gates have been locked.