Danville, Va. – A decision to transfer the remains of hundreds of farmers from African -American tenants from a former tobacco plantation of Virginia to a dedicated cemetery has caused a variety of emotions among the descendants of the shamers.
Some care about the implications of disturbing the tombs of the people who were exploited and enslaved. Others hope that the remains can be identified and regrured with more respect than they were offered in life.
The unidentified remains are moving from a site that had been part of one of the largest slave -owned operations in the country, to give way to an industrial park.
When they were buried, they were not considered completely human, but now they are “patriots who leave their tombs with equal rights in 2025,” said a descendant, Cedric Hairson.
Archaeologists have already begun to exhume the approximately 275 plots, and some of the remains of tenant farmers and their families are already at a funeral home, but will move to the new burial site to a mile away. Officials have been consulting with descendants about genetic tests in unidentified remains, as well as designs for the new cemetery, including a commemorative arch.
“I don’t think anyone wants their ancestors to exhuman or know each other,” said Jeff Bennett, whose great -grandfather was buried in the plantation. “But to give us a lot in the new cemetery, to the design details and the plates and memorials we present, I feel that they are really doing in a dignified way, in a respectful way.”
African -American cemeteries have suffered negligence, abandonment and destruction over the centuries. But efforts to preserve them They are winning impulse, With communities unearthingand reconstruction These crucial links with past generations.
While the project usually supports to move the tombs, Hairson cares about the indignity of exhuming the tombs of the people who were brutalized as slaves and exploited as parking lots.
“It seems that 100 years or so after his death, there is still no rest,” he said.
Oak Hill was part of a family empire that enslaved thousands of people in 45 plantations and farms in four states, according to “The Hairstons”, a 1999 book by Henry Wiencek that tells families of black and white hairstyles.
Samuel Hairson, the owner of the plantation, was supposedly the largest slave in the south, Wiencek wrote.
But the great property has remained mostly empty and without using since it ended the last century. The planting house of the 1820s was destroyed by fire in 1988.
Many who were enslaved in Oak Hill left after emancipation, Wiencek wrote. Those who remained as a tenant farmers were often deceived from wages and faced overwhelming poverty and, sometimes, violence in southern Jim Crow.
Some tenants of the tenants took Hairson’s last name, partly because “we had no other name to identify, since the government was collecting data for the census.” We did not brought surname with us from Africa, “said Cedric Hairson, adding:” Many of our women took and gave a Hairson child, never with the support of the law to inform that they were raped. “
One of the parking lots was Fleming Adams Mr., Bennett’s great -grandfather. Known as “Flem”, he was born in slavery in another plantation in 1830. He later worked at Oak Hill, where he had to bend down the doors because he was very high, Bennett said.
Adams and his wife Martha raised three children, George, Daniel and Flem Jr., before dying in 1916. His death certificate lists his place of burial as Oak Hill.
“My hope is that we can discover where Flem is,” said Bennett. “It was 7 feet high, so they would be looking for a larger coffin. And I hope there are enough remains where they could make a DNA sample. “
Most of the graves in the two isolated parking cemeteries were marked only by moss -covered stones without inscriptions. Depression ranks on Earth showed where the wooden coffins underneath had collapsed. Loblolly pins needles covered many of the plots.
A public entity, the Pittsylvania-Danville regional industrial facilities authority, acquired 3,500 acres (1,400 hectares) of land that included the old plantation of OAK HILL, and MicroPorous with headquarters in Tennessee announced in November that it would build a battery production of $ 1.3 billion there. Expect to create 2,000 jobs.
The Department of Historical Resources of Virginia granted permission at the end of November to move the tombs, noting that the relocation is consistent with the wishes of the descendant families. Bennett and others visited the sites in December.
Silence fell when they entered the first cemetery. JD Adams, a descendant of Oak Hill, said a historical marker must be placed there.
“We need some time to determine what we want and how we want it,” Adams told Matt Rowe, director of Economic Development of Pittsylvania County.
Rowe replied: “I am open to anything and everything.”
The industrial authority has raised $ 1.3 million to register the land to finance the project, which is being managed by the WSP engineering and consulting company.
WSP’s archaeologist John Bedell said that everything would be collected from each axis of the grave, even if it is mainly earth, and is transferred to its new space, including the stone that marked it.
The firm expects to finish transferring tombs in early March. The work in the new burial site and a dedication ceremony will continue in the coming months.
Bennett and others recently saw personal items found in the tombs. Protected in plastic bags, they included glasses, a bottle of medicine and a 5 cents of 1836. A man was buried with a bulb, a base and an electric cable. The tomb of another man was full of bricks, which indicates that he was rich, said Bennet.
These bricks will be reused at the new burial site, possibly in the Archway Memorial, and register with the names of the deceased, he said.
The descendants are reviewing the funeral records to try to identify those buried in unmarked graves. Given the challenging nature of the task, they can register the names of all those who lived in the area.
“I feel that we are emphasizing the importance of our ancestors,” said Bennett. “Generations have passed since people used that area to bury people. And now we are rediscovering their stories. And we hope we can keep telling those stories to the next generations. ”
