An online article Cedar trees and fieldstones: A likely slave cemetery is unearthed near Annapolis describes the verification of a slave grave.
A couple of men who had played in the area as kids in the 1970s heard about the slave quarters and the mystery of the burial ground and remembered a particular spot in the woods where a marble headstone lay.
Then on Feb. 24, Julie Schablitsky, chief archaeologist with the Maryland Department of Transportation’s State Highway Administration, five descendants of Belvoir slaves and one of the local men who had identified the site met there to see how a team of three cadaver-sniffing dogs would react.
“The black Lab came running out, and as it hit the cemetery it stopped in its track like it hit a wall,” Schablitsky said.
And the spot with the indentation? All three dogs lay down in it.
Watching them, one of the descendants, Shelley Evans, 67, of York, Pa., felt tears well up. “I was just in awe. I held my hand over my mouth,” she said. “I mean, maybe some of my ancestors were buried there.”
This was the article that inspired the subject matter of Hidden Archives, A Cozy Murder Mystery. When I moved to Alexandria, Virginia in 1985 after having spent the first twenty-eight years in the west, I was completely enthralled with the history of the Alexandria that lay right outside my door.
Founded in 1749 and boasting the nation’s third oldest historic district, a stroll in Alexandria’s Old Town with its homes dating from the 18th and 19th century, with the Gadsby Tavern frequented by the likes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, with the boyhood home of Robert E. Lee, was to me nothing less than evocative. When I was studying American history in school in Montana, we learned about the first settlers in the New World in places like Jamestown, the first Thanksgiving feast celebrating a bountiful harvest in Plymouth, the formation of plantations in Virginia and the south, the Revolutionary War leading to the birth of a fledgling new nation, and the Civil War leading to the emancipation of slaves, it all took place in some distant part of the United States. Now I was walking in the footsteps of George Washington and Robert E. Lee.
So, quite naturally, when I started thinking about writing a book taking place in Old Town Alexandria, its history crept into my imagination. By the time I returned in 2001, the history told by docents of the many of its landmarks was changing. Tours of famous historic homes like the Carlyle house now included the story of the slaves who worked there. Alexandria was home to both the country’s largest slave-trading firm and to a large free Black community.
This thriving American port played a major role in the Civil War.
Within days of Virginia’s secession from the Union in the spring of 1861, Federal troops arrived in Alexandria to take possession of the city. Union military forces arrived on May 24, 1861, and Alexandria became a logistical supply center for the federal army. Troops and supplies were transported to Alexandria via the port and the railroad and then dispersed where needed at the front.
Although Alexandria was a major slave-trading center prior to the Civil War, it also had a history of several free black communities. African-American life flourished with the establishment of churches, social and fraternal organizations, and businesses. Many early Alexandria African-Americans were skilled artisans. During the Civil War, African American refugees flooded into Union-controlled areas, including Alexandria and Washington.
As I delved into the history of the area, I came across a number of articles on the internet concerning the move to preserve historic Black cemeteries.
Griffin Burchard never forgot the dilapidated Virginia cemetery named after one of the most famous African Americans of the 19th century.
Burchard first spotted Douglass Memorial Cemetery — named for orator and abolitionist Frederick Douglass — while on a service trip with his Boy Scout troop about three years ago. The Scouts were supposed to be removing faded wreaths from pristine rows of graves inside the well-maintained Alexandria National Cemetery.
But Burchard’s eyes were drawn to the run-down plot just down the street.
“I noticed that, unlike all the other cemeteries in the complex, it was not being kept up,” Burchard, 16, said. “There were fallen leaves, signs of flooding, and trees with limbs hanging so far over you couldn’t even read the sign that says, ‘Douglass.’ ”
On Thursday afternoon, Burchard stood in that same cemetery, now swept clean of debris, and smiled as he watched a fellow Boy Scout whip away a black cloth to reveal a brand-new sign for the plot. It was the culmination of a months-long restoration project Burchard undertook to earn Eagle Scout status — and it was timed to coincide with the 400th anniversary of enslaved Africans’ arrival in Virginia.
5204 River Road in Bethesda, Maryland appeared to be an empty lot sitting next to a McDonald’s and across the street from a Whole Foods. According to local historians and anthropologists, it was there, under the hard clay soil, that they believe a burial ground and mass grave for formerly enslaved African peoples dating back to the 18th century laid. And, now, a company was in the midst of constructing a self-storage facility on top of it.
Prior to the 1960s, this part of Bethesda was a vibrant, working-class neighborhood of Black farmers, quarry workers, and small business owners.
The community was initially founded in the years immediately after the Civil War by a mixture of free Black people and freed enslaved people who had previously been forced to work on plantations in the immediate area. For all intents and purposes, the Macedonia Baptist Church and the cemetery, which has burials from this time period and potentially ones dating even further back, are the last remaining pieces of physical evidence of this community.
Contrabands and Freedmen Cemetery
The last time I visited Alexandria in 2022, we had the opportunity to visit this memorial. It was a cold, overcast day as we strolled around the site where placards marked the graves.
(Excerpt from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrabands_and_Freedmen_Cemetery)
For African Americans who escaped enslavement, the Union military occupation of Alexandria during the American Civil War created opportunity on an unprecedented scale. They flooded into Union-controlled areas as Federal troops extended their occupation of the seceded states. Safely behind Union lines, the cities of Alexandria and Washington offered not only comparative freedom and protection from their former enslavers, but employment for refugees.
African American men and women took positions with the U.S. Army as construction workers, nurses and hospital stewards, longshoremen, painters, wood cutters, teamsters, laundresses, cooks, gravediggers, personal servants, and ultimately as soldiers and sailors. They were also hired as domestic day laborers by other citizens. According to one statistic, the population of Alexandria had exploded to 18,000 by the fall of 1863 – an increase of 10,000 people in 16 months.
…many people arrived in ill health and malnourished after walking long distances from other counties in Virginia. They were housed in barracks and whatever housing they could build for themselves. In such close quarters, with poor sanitation, smallpox and typhoid outbreaks were prevalent and death was common, as it was in most military encampments.
In February 1864, after hundreds had died, the commander of the Alexandria military district, General John P. Slough, confiscated a parcel of undeveloped land at the corner of South Washington and Church streets from a pro-Confederate owner to be used as a cemetery specifically for burial of African Americans. Burials started in March that year.
The Cemetery disappeared from city maps after 1946 and in 1955, a gas station and, later, an office building were built on the site.
Beginning in 1987, when the history of the cemetery was rediscovered, it began to receive more attention. Archeological surveys in relation to construction of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge included use of ground penetrating radar (GPR) to determine the presence of graves. Some excavations also took place in order to locate surviving interments.
Archaeological work actually began in 1996 and 1998, with ground-penetrating radar and electromagnetic surveys in front of the gas station and along the southern and western edges of the site.
Because people who escaped slavery were still legally considered property of their owners, until the Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863) freed them, they were classified as “contraband property” by the Union Army so that they would not have to return these people to bondage under supporters of the Confederacy.
In 1997 the Friends of Freedmen Cemetery was organized to raise public awareness of the cemetery and support for its preservation. The City of Alexandria began the process of acquiring land and saving the cemetery to create a memorial park.
Modern urban development juxtapose with the need to detect, preserve or safeguard the past that lies beneath the land is a never ending conflict throughout the world. We see it in Arizona where the history of native Americans lies under the soil, in Europe boasting age-old civilizations, in Asia with mind-bogglingly ancient history. Builders own the land; the people own the artifacts buried there. The heart of my story in Hidden Archives is about this conflict in the context of slave graves.
