This church’s cemetery contains two of the Madonna figures that my friend and I found on a road trip through Camden County. The can trace its roots to the years before the Civil War. The current church buildings were in the last few decades.
The Madonna figures can be seen as a collective here.
The Village Cemetery is located on the 258 acre Guale Preserve which is part of the Musgrove Plantation. It is a private cemetery that is only open to the ancestors of the enslaved who are originally buried there. This is one of the most incredible collection of vernacular headstones I have personally had the opportunity to document.
The glasswork and friezes are all done by an incredible artist(s). I tried to do genealogical searches to determine why these markers are here. Sometimes there are clues in the records, but I am unable to determine any.
My appreciation to Brian Brown to showing me this hidden treasure of a cemetery.
This is one of the most impressive vernacular markers I’ve ever documented. If you’re familiar with the Nettles Death Masks in Alabama, I consider this marker as important as those masks. Down a sandy road, this small rural cemetery in Sandy Bottom is likely not threatened by development but by time and location. The ledger stone is cracked and the marker is leaning forward.
I was unable to find a great deal about Bessie and her family. She was married to a man who was 20 years older than she was. Her parents were John and Amelia “Mealie” McKnight and her husband was Lonnie Jones. On her birth certificate, it was revealed she died due to malaria.
Started in 1879, Holt Cemetery is a potter’s field cemetery in New Orleans that is primarily a Black cemetery. The plots are free. The only charge is for the burial.
It is filled with vernacular headstones. At 7 acres, it is a small, densely packed cemetery. It is still active. When I visited, they were preparing for another funeral.
I know people are often dismayed at the state of the cemetery. I find such beauty in the handmade markers. There are generations of families buried together here. It simultaneously speaks to the connection of families and the horrible history of racism in Louisiana and the United States.
The city of New Orleans did spend money in 2013 to repair and stabilize the cemetery, but individual plots were not part of the stabilization project.
At one point, it’s been documented that there were a handful of similar terra cotta markers like this one in the African American section at Memory Hill Cemetery. It is believed this marker was made at the McMillan Brick Company, a leading brickmaker in Milledgeville. It is believed the designs were made from stamps in the pottery shop at the brick factory.
The designs on this marker feature a sunflower, acanthus, and diaper (the crisscross pattern).
Down a sandy road, there is the Sheffield UMC Cemetery which has several vernacular headstones made with tile. Outside of marbles, this is one of the most used materials I see in homemade headstones and ledgers. There was a church next to the cemetery, but it burned many years ago.
