Greenwood Cemetery, St Louis

Greenwood Cemetery is an African-American cemetery in St. in St. Louis County. It has a rich and storied history in has seen good times and bad. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Greenwood has an estimated 50,000 graves. The earliest grave dates from 1874. Here is an excerpt from the national register of historic places nomination form for Greenwood Cemetery:

Established on January 19, 1874 by Herman Krueger, this is the first non-sectarian commercial cemetery for African Americans in the St. Louis metropolitan area. The cemetery has approximately 6000 marked graves, but is thought to contain over 50,000 burials. The graves represent a cross section of the African American community in St. Louis from former slaves and common laborers to community leaders in the small but thriving black middle class. The cemetery is characteristic of the rural cemetery movement, however, remnants of African and Southern black burial customs can be found throughout the cemetery.

Many of the people buried at Greenwood were originally inhabitants of Mississippi and other Southern states who participated in this Great Migration.

With desegregation, however, the need for separate cemeteries eventually ended, as did the commercial viability of St Louis' black privately owned cemeteries. By the 1980s all three commercial black cemeteries in the city had been sold to new owners, who soon discovered that there were no perpetual-care funds to maintain the facilities. The only source of income was the sale of new plots—a source inadequate to the maintenance needs at Greenwood. The result was that the cemetery rapidly declined and became a dumping ground and target for vandals.

State of Missouri, Department of Natural Resources, Nomination Form for Greenwood Cemetery to be on National Register of Historic Places (2004) [edited for brevity and consistency].

Bud light was soon on the horizon for Greenwood Cemetery. In March, 2000, the Attorney General of Missouri acted to declare Greenwood "abandoned" in that way forced the sale of the cemetery to St Louis County. Since that time, a nonprofit group known as Friends of Greenwood Cemetery has worked tirelessly to improve the condition of Greenwood Cemetery. Many of the group members are individuals who have family members buried in the cemetery. The Friends' efforts have been supported by the Missouri National Guard, Monsanto, the Boy Scouts, Southwestern Bell (now AT&T), and other organizations. Their efforts, though sincere, have at times been frustrating.

I recently was in contact with a Find-A-Grave volunteer who said while parts of the cemetery are still in poor condition, the group working on it has "cut down brush and tress in the center and uncovered some markers that go back to the 20's." They've also fixed a road.

At this link, there is a video that describes recent efforts to rehabilitate Greenwood Cemetery. All those who volunteer for such projects deserve the community's gratitude!

A number of notable people are buried at Greenwood. These include Harriet Scott, the wife of Dred Scott, and many musicians, artists, businesspeople, educators, and other prominent persons in the history of Black St. Louis.

My great great grandfather Elias A. Bowie [not to be confused with his son Elias G. Bowie, or his other son, Elias Bowie Jr., my granduncle] who died in 1970, is buried at Greenwood.

Also buried at Greenwood is a man named Lee Shelton. Lee Shelton died at the Missouri State penitentiary in 1912. He was serving a term for the murder of a man named William Lyons.

Contest Question [what's this?] : What were the meteorological, astronomical, and seasonal conditions on the night of the murder of William Lyons (according to the most popular folk culture account of the murder)?

If you know the answer to this question, put the answer in a comment to this post, or as a comment to the post on this link over at Geneablogie. State the source for your answer!

Image Sources:

1. Greenwood photograph: State of Missouri, Secretary of State, Missouri State Archives Missouri Digital Heritage Collections: Greenwood Cemetery Funerary Art [photographer and date unknown], available at

http://cdm.sos.mo.gov/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2Fgreenwood&CISOSORT=title|r
(accessed 5 June 2009)

2. Shelton Death Certificate: State of Missouri, Secretary of State, Missouri State Archives, Missouri Death Certificates, 1910-1958. Available at
http://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/deathcertificates/#search (searched 4 June 2009)

Grace Hill Cemetery, Longview, Texas

My visit to Grace Hill Cemetery in May, 2004, may have been the inspiration to blog about genealogy and related topics.

I had flown into Shreveport, Louisiana, on a business trip and decided to take a couple more days for genealogy research in the region. I drove about an hour west on I-20 to get to Longview, ancestral home of many in my Bowie line.

I got to Grace Hill Cemetery rather late in the day. I knew it was likely that many of my Bowie relatives were buried there, but at that point I had just one death certificate. It was for my great-great-grandmother, Amanda McCray Bowie.

Grace Hill Cemetery is near the intersection of U.S. Highway 80 (West Marshall Avenue), a major thoroughfare, and McCann Road in Longview.

I got to the cemetery at almost 5:00 p.m. due to circumstances beyond my control. It would be about closing time. I went to the caretaker's office (well, shack, really) and told a man there whose grave I was looking for. Like many cemeteries I have visited, the information age had yet to arrive here and the grave locations were kept on index cards in a small box. The man asked me if I knew Clarence Bowie. I said I knew of him, but didn't know him personally. Then the man said, "How do you know him?"

"Well, he's my cousin!" I told him. "Come on, cuz, let's go find Amanda's grave!" he replied.

We walked toward the eastern portion of the graveyard past a line of trees, and soon came to a row of mostly broken monuments. "There it is," he said pointing. Amanda Bowie's headstone is the largest monument in that row and it rested in the late afternoon shade of the trees. Next to it is the nearly as large headstone of Iba Bowie, one of the daughters of Amanda and John Wesley Bowie. Most of the other headstones were too broken or corroded to read, but the caretaker said that they were all likely Bowie family members in that row.



"Time was," he said,"that black people weren't allowed in this cemetery. Then they (the city) put up a fence and created a colored section. But after that the courts made 'em take down the fence so it would be one integrated cemetery."

"Where was the fence?" I asked naively. "You see this row of trees?" the caretaker asked. We were practically standing under them. "That's where the fence was." And indeed, I could tell that the trees formed a barrier of sorts between two sections of the cemetery. You could pass through this barrier, but it was still a barrier.

As I contemplated the two headstones, I was struck by how large they are. It must have cost the family s small fortune to afford them in the early twentieth century. How did they afford it? Why were Amanda and Iba seemingly singled out for special treatment? The caretaker didn't know the answers to those questions. He had not thought of them in any event.


Barrier tree line visible just behind grave of Iba Bowie.



This was not a rich family. Of the male Bowies I could find buried there, almost all were described as "laborers." The women either stayed at home or were cooks or other sorts of domestic servants. So how did they afford such elaborate monuments? The men's headstones were of the flat sort in the ground and were in terrible condition.

Perhaps the women were almost literally "put on a pedestal," explaining why their monuments are larger and generally better than the men's.

I wonder if this disparate treatment between the men and women relating to gravestones was just a Bowie family thing, or was it a Texas thing?

Graveyard or Landfill?

When a rock and dirt recycling company in Clayton County, Georgia, wanted to expand its operations, the company came across a 311-grave African-American cemetery in the way. What to do?

A situation like this can be grief for all concerned. The families whose loved ones' remains lie in the cemetery are the most obviously affected. But the company, too, acting in good faith is also affected. And the public is affected as well.

In this case, the county commission, acting under Georgia law, has granted a permit to an archeologist to move the graves to a nearby cemetery. The original graveyard had become virtually inaccessible due to development all around it, including Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

This, however, is not an isolated incident. Every year, more historic graveyards are moved or built over. The diligence to prevent this is in the first instance on families and historians. Each state has laws governing the operation of cemeteries. Genealogists and historians would be well-advised to become generally familiar with such laws.

Here at The PGR, we'll from time to time present some of these laws. And we'll have more this week about the Georgia controversy.

A New Rabbit: Santa Fe's African American Graveyard Rabbit

This new blog by the estimable George Geder can be found at http://africanancestryinsantafecemeteries.blogspot.com/.

George poses this interesting question: "How many African Americans are buried in Santa Fe, New Mexico? Who are they? What are their stories?"

His answers no doubt will fascinate and educate us. Check it out!