[Shannon Ricles] All right, hi everyone.
Thank you for joining us today
for our webinar
featuring The Historic Cemetery Landscape
of the North Carolina Coast.
I'm Shannon Ricles.
I'm going be your host today.
I'm the Education and Outreach Coordinator
for Monitor and Mallows Bay National Marine Sanctuaries.
This webinar is brought to you by
NOAA's Monitor National Marine Sanctuary
in collaboration with
the North Carolina Office of State Archeology.
Partnering since 1975,
NOAA and the state of North Carolina
work to research, honor,
and protect the hallmarks of North Carolina's
underwater cultural resources,
which are shipwrecks.
These shipwrecks hold information about the ever-changing
technologies and cultural and physical landscapes.
They serve as a uniquely accessible underwater museum
and a memorial to generations
of mariners who lived,
died, and fought
and worked off our shores.
Now, this is one of the many webinars we have hosted
and will host
in the future,
for the "Submerged North Carolina Webinar Series."
And we hope that you can join us for future ones.
Now, Monitor is just one of 15
national marine sanctuaries
and two marine national monuments
in the National Marine Sanctuary System.
The system encompasses more than 620,000 square miles
of marine and Great Lakes waters
from Washington state
to the Florida Keys,
and from Lake Huron to American Samoa.
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So, without further ado,
I'd like to welcome Melissa Timo,
a historic cemetery specialist
with the North Carolina Office of State Archeology.
And Melissa, I'm now gonna change presenters
and turn it over to you.
[Melissa Timo] Thank you very much.
And change this.
All right, thank you very much for having me.
Thank you very much for attending today.
We are going to be
getting our feet slightly out of the water
and talking about my strange little niche of archeology
and that's historic cemeteries.
And then, historic cemeteries,
I'm talking about
the time period between
the 18th century
and the beginning of the 20th century.
And we are going to
sort of take a road trip
up and down the coast
to see the different trends and landscapes
of North Carolina's historic cemeteries.
What did they look like in North Carolina?
And some of the concerns we're facing with cemeteries
in this sort of
environmentally sensitive part of the state.
So we're gonna start out with sort of the early days,
and so what do we see in the oldest of the
sort of post-contact European-American,
European cemeteries in North Carolina?
And one really great example is,
here in Edenton, North Carolina.
You can see,
I will include maps
where a lot of these places are,
if you're not from North Carolina,
you aren't really sure
where these are.
St. Paul's is a fantastic church
and churchyard in downtown Edenton,
established at the beginning of the,
beginning of the 18th century.
And we do see
a lot of the same sort of
types and motifs
that we might see
in other cemeteries of the same time period,
from places that you may
more readily recognize them from.
Places like Boston or Philadelphia,
where these high-style trends
that evolved over time.
We see, especially if you go to
some of the great cemeteries in Boston,
this is really a great,
easy place to see
the evolution and is really readily studied,
and it sort of goes from the sort of
skull and crossbones
to a cherub's head,
to the urn and willow.
And these are
motifs that are reflecting the cultural
beliefs at the time,
from the hard reality
of life and death,
from the earliest colonization period
to the age of enlightenment
and the softening
of the idea of
life and religion and death,
to all the way to
the Victoriana, heavily-invested black mourning,
lots of really
unflexible traditions that are associated with
death and survivors of those who've passed away.
And may or may not be surprising that we do see these
down in North Carolina as well,
especially on our coast.
So you can see on the right we have both the cherub,
as well as the urn and willow
as we move into the early 19th century.
But we also,
at these coastal towns,
see some of the oldest families
and the established wealth.
And we also see beautiful, really ornate
Victorian era headstones like this one
in a B. Cox, B.P. Cox,
with all of its,
there's this tradition in Victorian era of floriography,
which is the study,
the language of flowers.
Every flower, every symbol has a meaning.
And you can
spell out all kinds of wonderful sentiments
or cast all kinds of insults
just by the type of flowers that you use.
And we see this
very floral, very elaborate tradition continued
in our coastal cemeteries.
For example, you can see this one is
very large, it's taller than I am,
and it is,
got all kinds of flowers
and an urn
that used to sit at the top
that you can see in the right-hand picture.
Interesting to note though,
Ann's headstone, the epitaph,
has almost nothing to do with her.
Most of the writing is talking about her grandfather
who was Colonel Edward Buncombe,
who was a Revolutionary War soldier.
And what Buncombe County,
where Asheville is,
was named after.
So her entire
headstone is about her grandfather,
but it does note that she was a wife
most kind, affectionate and confiding.
So that comes with the territory for
women in the earliest time periods,
it was a reflection of the men in their lives.
And so, it's interesting because we can learn about
their family structures
and who they're related to.
But again, the women,
children, minority communities
have less details about themselves,
which makes the research
and the community outreach
all that more important when using
cemeteries like this
for genealogical purposes.
And again, like I said,
seeing these trends
does not necessarily,
should not necessarily be
surprising along the coast because
we do see
the settlement reflecting,
the period of settlement along the coast reflecting
the same period up
in the northeastern part of the country.
So all of these things would be
coming in from other places,
and we can see how they might be influenced.
However, this changes over time
as North Carolina stretches out
towards the mountains
and developed its own identity
and starts tapping into its own resources.
Another thing we see
along the coast that we don't see
in places like Boston or New York or Philadelphia
are the landscape differences.
And, of course, we have the beautiful live oak trees
and wild plants
that are native to
the coastal North Carolina.
And these really affect both the way they feel,
the way people treat these cemeteries
and as well as how they survive over time.
And we'll talk a little bit about that
later on in the presentation.
But this is a really great example,
the Old Burying Ground in Beaufort, North Carolina,
down further on the coast,
sort of central coast of North Carolina.
This is also an older cemetery,
but this cemetery,
there is a gap between
the oldest headstones
and when it was first established.
There's a whole section where we
believe that the earliest
burials were interred.
However, they don't have markers,
and that's not surprising
'cause a lot of older markers may not have survived,
or they may have been made of perishable materials
like wood, that would've eroded in the
environment of the coastal climates.
But it is a beautiful cemetery.
It has lots of great examples,
has that very southern gothic feel
and it is definitely
a place worth visiting.
We do see it a
range of stone types,
headstone types and styles,
including these great
sort of grave houses that I'll talk about in a minute,
as well as a lot of this
decorative curbing to outline the graves.
We also have a lot of great stories in this cemetery,
everything from sailors and merchants.
Otway Burns was a
war of 1812
hero and you can see his
grave definitely screams soldier.
There's even stories about,
say, children that have passed away
on ocean voyages.
There's a famous story of a little girl
who passed away
and her father promised to return her remains home
and he put her in a barrel of rum,
so the story goes,
in order that she would be able to be
re-interred in Beaufort.
And so, there are lots of great reflections
of the maritime heritage,
the coastal trade and navigation
of the waters
along North Carolina's coast,
reflected within the cemetery itself.
As we move
sort of away from the urban centers and into
sort of the
rural areas where plantations developed,
we do see,
again, some of these high-style
markers that we might see in other big cities
because these are associated,
commonly associated, with those who
owned the plantation.
So, they have a high level of wealth.
This one in particular is associated,
you can find it within Pettigrew State Park
near Lake Phelps,
there you can see.
And it has
a lot of
beautiful, very expensive,
probably imported from other parts, markers.
However, it is noted that
not all of the interments
in this cemetery
are marked with a grave.
And this is not because
they were had temporary markers
or impermanent markers.
The stories, the research, shows
that these burials come from the most recent time period,
into the late 19th century.
And this is a period where the family,
after the Civil War,
did not have
the wealth level as they did before the Civil War.
And so, those people
did not receive a marker
because there wasn't the financial means
to purchase one.
Another thing that's very interesting about
this cemetery, and it's tied to the landscape,
is the fact that it is close to water.
And so, this is
an artificially-raised cemetery
with a retaining wall around
the entire perimeter,
to keep it above sort of
the water table and the flood zone
of that area.
And this is
one thing that I like to talk to people about,
the tie of
a cemetery as being more than a place
and more than a landscape.
It's sort of both.
It's this cultural
landscape in which
it's just a patch of grass and yet it is not.
It's not just a site,
it's not just an archeology site,
it's not just a shipwreck,
it's also the receptacle for human remains.
So, cemetery landscapes are felt.
People feel much differently about them
than, say, even the
yard of someone's ancestral home,
because there is so much more meaning
and symbolism attributed to these places.
And so, it's important as we think about,
especially long-term management
of these historic cemeteries,
that we take into account the entire landscape.
And that entire landscape
does include the natural elements,
and along the coast,
that's the water in the plants.
And we'll talk more,
we'll see more examples of why this is,
additionally important later on in the presentation.
Another thing that we see
along the coast,
in some areas,
are these things
called grave houses
or grave shelters.
Now, this is a
structure constructed over a grave
that we often
find attributed to
sort of the mountainous part of the state
or to Tennessee.
They're often called Appalachian grave houses.
These are semi-impermanent.
They're substantial structures,
but they're often made of things like wood.
There is a lot of
questions about why these were constructed,
why this became
the thing to do.
Part of the idea,
possibly linking to
these ones from
Old Beaufort Burying Ground,
ties back to
European traditions of
grave houses, grave structures,
especially associated with Catholic cemeteries.
There are other thoughts that they might have been
to keep out the weather
or to keep
livestock at bay,
so that livestock don't trample the graves
'cause we have a lot of
rural parts of the state where
livestock is a problem.
I think that
it feels probably, more to me,
that the ones that we see along the coast,
especially like the ones you see on the right
from Currituck County,
that they are
probably tied to the weather.
But it's interesting to see that these are
made of stone and metal
instead of wood.
Is that survivor-bias,
that only these metal ones survive
'cause metal does better?
Or was this a
specific and purposeful choice
by people along the coast?
And I think that's a topic that
deserves more research
'cause these things
don't stick around,
especially now into the 21st century.
So, it's important to research these things
while we can.
Next, we're gonna
take our road trip to England,
and that might seem
not North Carolina coast,
but we can actually visit England
on Ocracoke, in Hyde County
on the Outer Banks.
This is a really interesting cemetery
tied to a 20th century event,
and that is tied to
sort of the
marine sanctuary and the idea of Torpedo Alley
during the 1940s
and World War II.
During the 1940s,
we had a lot,
as you may know,
if you pay attention to
all the other wonderful work
and outreach that the marine sanctuaries do
here on the East Coast,
that this was a hot spot for a lot of U-boat activity
trying to stop
the supply chains
and the support for the Allied forces during the war.
And so, there was a lot of exchange of gunfire,
a lot of naval battles that happened
off the coast of North Carolina,
the Graveyard of the Atlantic.
And one of those has to do with
the HMT Bedfordshire,
which was a
ship that was here specifically to help protect
the North Carolina coast.
But it was sunk by a
U-boat in May of 1942,
and all 37
of its crew perished,
and most of them were lost at sea,
but a handful made it to shore.
The residents of Ocracoke did
find those gentlemen
and buried them quietly
in their own plots
on the island,
that area, that British cemetery,
as it's now known,
was leased in perpetuity
to the Commonwealth of England,
so that there should always be
a forever corner of England
that these gentlemen
are buried in.
Unless the British government decides to bring them home,
they will always have a little piece of home here
on the barrier islands of North Carolina.
Now, we're going to move
back up the coast
to Currituck County,
which is way up north,
near the Virginia border there.
And this is
another thing that we see happen to our older cemeteries,
and that's impacting by human activities.
And this particular cemetery
is sort of an interesting case.
A few years ago,
there was a development being,
a subdivision being built
in Currituck County,
and there was a cemetery.
Well, at least we knew it was some sort of a cemetery
because there was one headstone.
But is that one headstone?
Or is that a whole cemetery?
Cemeteries are sort of sneaky like that,
especially older ones,
because headstones disappear over time.
And so, it's always tricky
to determine how big it is
and which is why
the Office of State Archeology
requests that research be done
before a project be undertaken,
just in case
there are additional burials
and we don't want to impact them.
And so we suggest things like
ground penetrating radar
or other type of probing surveys,
so that we can determine where these burials are.
So we know it can help
developers avoid them
and avoid the issues that come with
accidentally exposing human remains.
So there was a development here
in Currituck County,
and unfortunately, there was some confusion.
Though there was one headstone though,
and this headstone
is from 1786,
which is makes it one of the oldest surviving headstones
in the county
and it has this awesome,
awesome epitaph on it.
My favorite line is,
"A heap of duff alone remains of thee."
"'Tis all thou art
and all the proud shall be."
Which is a spin on
sort of the
epitaph you see later in the 19th century
that I used for the title of this presentation.
And it is,
that is a very common shape
for the 18th century.
But is this young man
the only person in the cemetery?
Unfortunately, it is not.
And as the
work got underway,
a grave was accidentally disturbed.
And I'm not gonna talk a whole lot about
that whole process.
But one of the interesting takeaways from
that exposure, as sort of terrible as it was,
the work had stopped,
archeologists came out
and they identified,
which is kind of hard to see in the ground,
but it's under that,
where that red circle is.
The person who was buried in there
was not buried in your typical coffin
with the sort of six-sided
or rounded coffin
made of wood.
He was buried
in one of the Fisk
sort of metallic, sealed coffins.
And these are a really interesting,
very Victorian idea that came up
in the middle of the 19th century.
Fisk developed these
and released them
first in 1848
and these coffins
were made of metal.
They were completely sealed tight
and they had over the face there,
they had a glass viewing plate
so you can see the person there in.
And that ties
all kinds of ways into
the ideas of Victorian mourning
and what they thought about bodies,
and what they thought about death,
and being sure,
and being helpful as well.
There is a concern sort of
trailing out of the idea of sort of miasmas,
that cemeteries gave off bad,
you could get sick from being in a cemetery.
And so, some of these
ideas of cleanliness and helpfulness
and sealed in tight
plays into that role.
Plus, the whole sadness of the mourning
rituals of losing someone,
but being able to see them
inside of their coffin
by lifting the metal plate to see the glass
and seeing their face underneath
ties in very neatly to
the ways that they practiced
their morning rituals.
And we have one in
a very rather rural part
of North Carolina.
So that tells me,
if I know nothing else about
who this possibly could be,
that tells me about
this person having a certain level of wealth
that he was able to afford
to bring this down
from up north.
That he had maybe connections
and he had maybe some education,
or at least was well-read about
the current ideas and beliefs
and scientific principles of the day.
And so, as an archeologist,
it's these little pieces
put together that tell me
about who's buried there,
even if we never know
the person's name.
And that's often the case in historic cemeteries.
If the headstones are gone,
it's very, very difficult to find out who is in the,
who is in
the grave itself.
Even if you think of,
especially in 2022,
the idea of DNA testing.
Well, first of all,
you have to have DNA samples to compare to,
and North Carolina soils
and soils in the Southeast
aren't great for biological preservation.
They can be pretty acidic.
And so, there may not even be a DNA sample to take.
So, in this case,
we had a little bit of information to tie
who this person was,
and it was decided that
everyone was going to stay in place,
which is our ideal.
We would prefer,
the Office of State Archeology,
while there's no hard and fast rules,
there are rules
for how things should be done,
but we would prefer that
burials stay where their kin put them,
where their family put them,
for a couple of reasons.
One, because it's
something that their family chose,
that they may have chosen for themselves.
And also because,
oftentimes, cemeteries can be the last remnant
of a historic landscape.
There may have been
a plantation or a farm,
and now, like in this case,
there's a subdivision.
Or there was a town,
but now all the old building have been torn down
and there are a lot of strip malls
and modern buildings in place.
But the cemeteries often
get left behind because
there's a lot of complications
with moving cemeteries.
It's possible, but there's a process
outlined in the North Carolina Statutes.
And so, they often get left in place,
which, because of the way
and the placement of cemeteries
on the landscape,
we can use that as a
sort of a lynch point
or a fulcrum to map out
where the rest of the community was,
or how people used that landscape,
because you would put cemeteries
in very specific areas.
You wouldn't maybe put them
in the road.
In the early days,
finding a cemetery in the center of town
made sense because that's where the church was.
But as we move into the
later 19th century and into the 20th century,
cemeteries are put towards the outside of town
where there's more room
and there's less of
a possible impact
to the people living in the city.
And so, we can use these,
set these lone remnants
of a past landscape to help us
figure out the rest of the way,
the rest of the,
the way the rest of the landscape was used.
So, in this case,
that exposed coffin was
reburied and marked,
and the developers put in,
after this picture,
everything was cleaned up,
a new fence was put in
around the cemetery
and it is protected there now.
But I'm talking about
sort of very fancy cases.
I've talked about very fancy cases so far
where there's a lot of
money and influence from outside
culture and ideas coming into
a town or into
a sort of more wealthy person's life.
But that, of course, is not everybody.
And we do
have to think about
all the other folks
that lived along the North Carolina coast
and that means that we do
see a lot of examples
of things that aren't very flashy
and may be very impermanent
and easy to overlook.
Especially in the center part
of the North Carolina Eastern Seaboard.
We do have a lot of turpentine
in logging industries,
naval store industries,
and so a lot of things tied to pine.
And so we do see pine markers,
whether they be posts,
like you see the one on the left,
or sometimes they are shaped,
but these are marking
cemeteries along the coast
and in towards the Fayetteville area.
But we have to be very careful and pay attention to them
because obviously wood
does not last forever.
We also see a lot of
fieldstone markers, oftentimes uninscribed.
These, the posts and the stones,
were used both by
rural communities and those
who had lesser means,
as well as African American
and pre-emancipation
enslaved communities found in North Carolina.
And these are
easily buried as well.
So that's why we,
one of the things that we
strive for is to get as many of these
cemeteries recorded on the state registry
called the North Carolina Site File.
And this is a list of archeological sites
and historic sites
and historic cemeteries.
And this helps us identify where these are,
so we can help
set an extra pair of state-level eyes on these.
So when projects are happening,
when developments are happening,
we're able to warn people
that these cemeteries are here
and they need to be
figured into the plans
in order that they aren't impacted.
And because it, sometimes, is difficult
and maybe only the descendants
know what they're looking for,
I joke that everybody's auntie
knows where the old cemetery is,
but if she passes away,
then we've lost that information.
Which is why we
always ask people
if they know of an old cemetery,
especially if it's
one of their family's
and it's in a tucked away place,
that they report it,
because a lot of our tucked away rural places
aren't really tucked away and rural anymore
as the state sees
record amounts of development.
So adding this knowledge to you today will hopefully
give you that extra step
to keep your eyes open as you
walk around North Carolina,
enjoy our wilderness areas,
to see if you can find these places.
And, of course, we see more than just
posts and stones marking graves.
And we do see a lot of artifacts,
especially along the coast.
And this was a tradition,
especially tied to
the pre-emancipation
in African American enslaved communities,
particularly the Gullah Geechee culture.
And these things
are tied into this community,
which is a really
interesting historic and current community,
bred from the coastal parts
of the Southeastern United States.
It is a culture.
It is a language.
It is a food style.
It is an artistic style
that came from
these African American communities
that were enslaved on indigo and rice plantations
along the coastal
and barrier islands and sea islands
of Southeastern United States,
where they were sort of
isolated and were able to
develop this mixed
culture of different
Central and West African,
especially West African,
traditions to form something new
and beautiful and very
American, so to speak.
And so we see
a lot of these things
from the African traditions that
develop in new ways
in the new world.
And this also
ties into the period of enslavement where
formal marked stones
were not things that
these communities had access to.
And so, there were other ways that they played out,
and they were able to lean on
their African traditions
in order to create something new,
to create memorials
that were significant
for their communities
but might not be as familiar
to us as 21st century folks.
You can see that
the Gullah Geechee Corridor,
which is what they're
represented in now,
stretches from the
very northern bits
of Florida all the way up
to the southeastern coast of North Carolina,
although it's commonly associated with, say,
the sea islands of Georgia,
we're on the water.
So people travel up and down in these traditions,
passed up and down,
and cemented into a cultural mindset.
This is a really fantastic community.
They do a lot of really interesting
education and outreach,
and I really encourage you
to visit the
website at the bottom of the page
in order to learn more about these
folks and hopefully catch an event
where they're able to talk about
or demonstrate their culture to you
because they are
a really dynamic
and interesting group of people.
So to demonstrate what these traditions look like,
we're gonna go all the way down to the southern part
of North Carolina, to Southport,
and this is the John N. Smith Cemetery,
which was, almost exactly a year ago,
added to the National Register of Historic Places,
which is super exciting.
This has a lot of those traditions
that I was talking about with
material and plant items.
And some of these traditions,
with the afterlife was associated with water,
so we see things like
shells or glass or mirrors or bowls
that hold water
that may look common
but are directly tied
to the way they did things
in Western and Central Africa.
And we also see personal items left behind,
whether that be someone's
medicine bottle or a
favorite quilt or cup.
I've seen shaving mugs,
toys, all kinds of things that appeal to
and support the ancestors,
because the ancestors
are there to offer you advice,
and they're also important people to use.
So, you want to keep them happy
by leaving things
in the cemetery.
And this cemetery
does have a very strong Gullah Geechee
cultural tie to it.
So we see a number of these
traditions still reflected here.
We see personal items.
We see special plants,
like the palms planted there.
We also see prolific use of shell.
And this is,
these are as whelks shells, they're coastal,
it makes sense.
But it is
everything from the shape
and how they're placed on there,
tied to things done specifically in Africa.
And while their descendants
may not necessarily believe in the same
African religious systems
from their earlier ancestors,
it becomes a aesthetic
that this is what a cemetery is supposed to look like,
and it does continue.
So we've got the Howe family plot
in that black and white photo on the right,
and this is
continued in the Howe family plot today.
Those shells are renewed every couple of years
by an active choice
by the descendants
and by the local Gullah Geechee inspired
and Gullah Geechee community.
And we see that
all over the John N. Smith Cemetery.
If you're ever in Southport,
I strongly recommend you go and visit this one.
And this can take the place,
take the shape of shells,
personal items and even things
to help indicate
like the grave at the bottom there
for that little boy.
You can tell
that that's a grave for a little boy
because of the things left behind.
We also have
probably the best tree that I've
ever seen in a cemetery ever.
This giant tree that,
and this is, these giant trees,
even though they can become problematic
and people want to seem to rip trees out of cemeteries,
things like this,
its size and its central placement,
this is something that archeologists and historians
and folklorists call a witness tree.
They've witnessed the history over time,
and so it
becomes as much of the
aesthetics and the cultural history
as it is
a plant on the landscape.
And so, a lot of these things,
the shells, the palms, the artifacts,
they are protected under North Carolina General Statutes
because they're acting as memorials.
And so, it's important for you
to leave these things in place
unless you're a direct descendant
and you've made
a choice within your family to change something
of that nature.
And so, leave it in place,
take a picture
and because, if not,
then you could be
prosecuted under General Statute 14-148 and 14-149.
We see a little further
up the coast in Wilmington, another example,
and this is the Maides Cemetery.
And we see that the
sort of evolution of,
into the early 20th century,
what these traditions of homemade
and sort of
come from within the community
markers manifest as.
We have shells,
we have these poured concrete markers that have
been made at home,
we have materials that
have been brought from the community to make
a memorial for this person,
even if they weren't able to afford
marble or granite.
Now, finally, we're gonna wrap up with
what happens to these places?
Or what is happening to these places?
And there is a real concern about our coastal cemeteries
because coastal areas,
by their nature,
are usually on the East Coast, pretty low-lying.
And if you haven't
been paying attention to the news over the last 10 years,
weather is changing dramatically.
Storms are very powerful,
and we find that our coastal areas are facing
a lot of erosion.
This is one that we have found recently,
that we're going to be studying further,
off the Outer Banks there.
And that is a cemetery and we know that
it's a cemetery and not a structure
because the government has told us,
and it is its own tax
parcel for the county.
And as you can see from this other map
that it was
on land and now
it very much isn't.
So what does it look like now?
And how is
the erosion of the coastline
through storm events and sea level rise
and climate change affecting
these coastal cemeteries?
Because it is affecting them very dramatically.
We've got this cemetery here on Hatteras Island,
on the Hatteras seashore,
the Salvo Community Cemetery,
that has been greatly affected over the last few years,
especially by a number of storms.
We can see,
if you look at the
four graves on the left-hand side,
the two on the furthest right,
those have been relocated
because of the creep
of the seashore.
And the two on the left
are washed away completely
in a recent storm event.
So this is something that you'll see
that it's being impacted
and it's being impacted,
not just 'cause it's on the shoreline,
but because in front of this cemetery,
when it was established in the late 19th century,
was a marshland,
a marshland that
protected the coast
and prevented as much damage.
But now, that has been eroded away.
And so, all of these big storm events,
like Irma I believe affected this
cemetery a great deal,
has been eating away at the heads,
at the shoreline,
and undercutting and exposing
the graves and the burials,
which does mean that
decomposition and destruction is happening
much, much, much more quickly.
And there are living descendants nearby,
who are just heartbroken.
So, this isn't a forgotten place,
this is a living place,
in living people's memories.
And after a recent storm events,
the money was raised
to put in a sea wall.
However, we have another,
especially because this is tied in
with a national seashore,
we have this new
sea wall put in place to protect it,
but a sea wall is a great place
to walk and to hang out.
And even though a lot of people,
especially people who might attend a presentation like this,
feel very strongly about
the sacredness of cemeteries,
a lot of people feel like,
"It's not my kin,
it's not my problem."
"It's not my people, it's not my problem."
And so, these type of
structures are attractive
to tourists who may not
take into consideration what
their actions within the cemetery
might do to help degrade it even further.
So, education and outreach is really important
in this situation.
Storms do a big damage,
do big damage to cemeteries as well.
We're going back to the Old Burying Ground at Beaufort.
This is after hurricanes Florence and Michael in 2018,
where all those big beautiful live oak trees
that are so atmospheric and delightful,
were obviously impacted by the storms.
And as they were
pulled up and they fell over,
they exposed cemetery features
within the fill,
within the root ball.
And some of these
were items that got buried over time,
and some of these,
like in the red circle on the right,
were never intended to be exposed.
And so, there is a very delicate process
for removing these trees,
especially involving not bringing heavy equipment like
even pickup trucks or
cranes like were necessary within
the confines of the cemetery grounds,
because these old cemeteries are very fragile
and the weight of these large
pieces of equipment
could impact the cemetery further.
Especially if you remember that
a lot of the very
oldest graves in this cemetery
are no longer marked
and we're not a 100% where all of them are.
And so, we want to make sure that
the tree removal process isn't just
yank 'em out of the ground,
that it's done in a very sensitive way
in order to prevent further damage,
after damage has already occurred.
And so, there is a process
and my offices can help, my office.
And we partnered with FEMA
to help people
figure out the best plan
for going about
the restoration of these places.
So what is the state of North Carolina doing
for these cemeteries,
especially the ones along the coast
that are so threatened?
Well, we did receive
an emergency supplemental historic preservation fund
by the National Park Service
after the two storms in 2018,
Florence and Michael,
to do a cemetery survey of,
primarily right now this phase,
state-owned and managed properties
in these nine coastal counties
that were impacted by the storms.
And we're both identifying
cemeteries that we
already know about,
just check on them,
to see how they've been impacted by
these storms and other climate
and storm events that have happened since then.
But also trying to identify new cemeteries,
especially those that are very faintly marked
like we had talked about,
to add to our list
to help land managers
develop plans because a lot of these coastal
state-owned and managed properties are environmental
or wildlife protection areas,
and they're not archeologists.
So, we're going to help them develop plans.
And if our models are successful with this,
then we can share with
other places up and down the coast,
as well as other private,
county, and municipal land managers
who need help developing a plan to
protect their cemetery.
So to identify the ones we don't know about
we are, especially ones associated with
pre and just post-emancipation African-American communities,
we're doing a lot of document research
in which we are triangulating
known historic resources
in order to find cemeteries.
Where I talked about
before using the cemetery
to help triangulate where other resources are,
we have enough historic resources,
enough documentation in this area
to do the reverse.
So you can see
we have other cemeteries,
plantations, African American churches
in which we are
comparing where they are
in order to predict
where we might find
other cemeteries within these areas.
And we will be doing those research
over the next couple of years,
so we hope
you pay attention to our,
or stay tuned
and visit our website
to learn more as we move forward.
I'm also here to
answer any other question about cemeteries in general,
not just on the coast.
If you have any weird
cemetery questions or not-so-weird cemetery questions,
I realize that this is not
a topic that most people think about,
but I am here to answer your questions.
You can find us on Facebook.
We also have a dedicated cemetery page
where you can learn about
cemetery resources, the laws that govern cemeteries
in North Carolina, et cetera.
And so, I have just finished
and I think we can move onto
the question and answer section,
if anyone wants to think about that.
Shannon: All right, well thank you Melissa.
That was fascinating.
Lots of great information in there.
Now, if you haven't typed your question in,
please remember that you can do so
in the question box
and we're gonna get to those in just a minute.
Also, if you haven't downloaded Melissa's bio,
in the chat box,
you might want to do that now.
And in that bio,
you're gonna find more information about Melissa,
but you'll also find some of those links
that she's mentioned
that might be of interest to you.
So I also wanna say, Melissa,
that Mark Losavio, our media and outreach coordinator
joined us while you were talking,
so I'm gonna let Mark help me field the questions.
But the first question
I had that came in said,
"The Appalachian grave houses
looked very similar to Native American burial houses."
"Is there any correlation there at all?"
-: There could be,
but from the research that I've seen,
they've been mostly tied with European Americans.
However, being in a very rural area,
rural areas tend to be a great melting pot,
especially in the old days,
of different communities
that are out on the frontiers coming together.
So, there could be,
there's always a possibility,
but that's not what I've seen in the research.
But again, this is an area that
more research needs to be done.
Shannon: Okay, thank you.
And Mark, is there a question that you want to ask?
Mark: Yes, and hi everybody.
This question is about Florida.
"In Florida, we have found
that historic cemeteries
are a really under-recorded resource."
"Have you found that to be the case in North Carolina?"
"And if so,
have you all found an effective way to address that?"
-: Yes, definitely very under-recorded.
There were some periods of time
in the past where,
for whatever reason,
cemeteries were not recorded like archeological
or historic sites.
And I don't know why,
but we're definitely changing that.
So, for example,
Dare County, which is one of the older counties
along the coast,
we have 10 cemeteries recorded in the state register,
and we know
there's a whole book.
So, we know that there is
a ton more cemeteries
in Dare County.
So that is something we are definitely actively working on.
My whole position was established a few years ago
in order to
help work on
this issue of cemeteries
not being addressed
as thoroughly as other resources in the past.
So we are starting with some internal records,
some state-level records held by other agencies
to build our records.
And then, we're getting a new database soon,
so we'll be reaching out,
after that's established,
to counties and municipalities,
and institutions like universities and churches,
in order to bring in
more of this information.
There are lots of resources out there
that we know of,
we are just working on
the best way to streamline it because
the Cemetery Program is
a really generous term
for me and two temporary employees.
So it is something that we're working on,
but yes, definitely very underrepresented.
Shannon: Okay, and another question that came in
that said, "In many cases cemeteries are removed
when there are no known relatives anymore."
"Which criteria do they have to meet
for cemeteries or graves,
in order that the government
or federal or state
will come in and care for them?"
-: We don't have one
under North Carolina General Statutes.
Cemeteries aren't generally removed
unless there is something
instigating a move,
whether that be
the descendants choosing
to move people to a new place
or there is
some sort of development or a DOT,
or an Army Corps of Engineers project that's happening
and there's no other way around it,
that they're going to be impacted.
But there is nothing
that in the General Statutes
in North Carolina, right now,
that mandates any landowner
or any individual
to do anything to a cemetery
as far as take care of it.
There's lots of things you can't do,
like pull up graves or disturb remains,
or disturb the artifacts
or the memorial plants.
But there is nothing triggering, right now,
anybody to care for a cemetery,
which is good and bad.
For some of these rural ones,
that means they stay
sort of hidden,
outta sight, outta mind.
No hooligans can get in there
if they don't know it's there in the first place.
But it can be very
emotional and very impactful for people who
want to see a
different path taken.
And there's ways that we can talk
to individuals who
feel like they
want to take on a project like that,
but, right now, there is not a trigger for
any state agency
to particularly assume control
or a county
or municipal government
to assume control to care of a cemetery.
Shannon: Okay, Mark, do you have another question
you would like to ask?
Mark: Yes, I actually really love this question.
"Do you have any historical fiction
or nonfiction book suggestions
to learn more about this topic?"
-: Historical books?
(sighs) Oh yes, actually, there is a
pretty famous book in North Carolina.
It's called "Sticks and Stones"
by M. Ruth Little.
It's a beautiful sort of the seminal work
of North Carolina historic cemeteries.
It's a beautiful hardcover book that you can get,
I got mine on Amazon,
that has lots of great images.
But as far as fiction goes,
I'm not quite sure.
I'd have to think about that.
But definitely, if you wanna know more about
North Carolina cemeteries,
get Ruth Little's book because
it has so much great information
and a lot of really beautiful images of cemeteries,
some of which are
sort of worse for wear since she's made it.
So, it's great to see
what they looked like before some of these were impacted.
Shannon: Okay, another question that came in said,
"Are there any burial traditions
among the indigenous people
traditionally located in the area,
that leave recognizable landscapes or artifacts
that your office might document?"
-: There probably are,
but that's something that I'm not very familiar with
and that's something that I really want to learn more about.
Right now, we've got a really great partnership with
the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission.
And we have the African American Cemetery Program,
where we're documenting
and recording and working with communities,
with African American cemeteries.
North Carolina recently
established Native American Heritage Commission,
and, I mean, they're not even off the ground yet.
But that's one of the things that
as soon as they're
up and ready, I will be knocking on their door
to figure that out.
I focus mostly on post-contact,
but I know that there has to be
pre-contact Native American traditions as well,
and I definitely wanna partner with them
to learn more because
the tribal culture, is much like every other part of
the United States,
are very varied
and there are different traditions that happened
in different places.
So, I definitely wanna partner with them
and their staff
and the other tribal communities along
the coast and in North Carolina, in general, to learn more.
But that is a serious gap in my personal knowledge
that I am actively working on because it is
definitely something that is not as
readily recorded because there's not a whole lot of
research that has been done,
and that needs to change.
Shannon: Okay, and Mark,
I think we have time for one more question.
Mark: All right,
I think this is a good question.
"Has this inventory project
revealed any unanticipated
or surprising revelations
or new research questions?"
-: Yes, mostly just the...
Okay, so we're working on this
and especially going into some of the older surveys
that were done in
the '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s, 80's, and '90s,
we have discovered that
only about 8% of the cemeteries
that have been surveyed
are African American related,
and that's a problem.
We also have
that 56% of those are unattributable,
so we have no idea who they're associated with.
And so, we have to figure out
better ways to do
research and develop partnerships within communities
because, again, it's me
and two temporary people,
and I can't do the whole state,
even though I sort of
oversee questions from the entire state.
So we need
a better way to do more effective research,
to be able
to demonstrate that
these communities are doing these things.
We're also noticing,
while there are some blanket descriptions for
what enslaved communities cemeteries look like,
those models don't fit the entire state of North Carolina.
The people along the coast
that are influenced by the Gullah Geechee communities,
their traditions are not represented in the Piedmont,
like east of the mountains
and west of the coast,
Raleigh, Durham, Sanford, Charlotte.
We don't see those same traditions reflected
in the Piedmont,
we see different
reflections in the mountains.
So that needs additional work.
There's a lot of
really interesting research projects
that have started within the last year or two
that are examining just that.
What are these regional trends?
So what we've learned is that
there are far more nuances, of course,
and a lot more questions that need to be answered.
So, I call that job security
because there's always something
new to learn about cemeteries.
Shannon: All right, very good.
Well, if we did not get to your question
or if you have additional ones,
you can always send them to Melissa,
and her email address
is listed here on the screen.
We also advise you to learn more
by visiting the website
for the Cemetery Program,
which is also listed there
on the screen.
And it's also in your handout,
if you had downloaded the bio for Melissa.
A video recording of the presentation
will be available on the Sanctuaries' Webinar Archives page,
found at the URL listed at the top.
In addition, the webinar will be on the
Monitor National Marine Sanctuary's website.
You'll just click on the Multimedia section
in the toolbar
to access the webinar box.
You'll also find future webinars in that same section.
And, don't worry,
all of this information will be sent to you
in a follow up email
once the recording is ready to view.
Usually takes us about
at least a week
to get it up on the website.
So, be patient, it will be there.
I did wanna invite you that tomorrow,
you can join the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries
to discover what National Marine Sanctuaries have to offer
and how educational materials
bring the ocean and Great Lakes waters into your
classroom, home, facility, or wherever you learn best.
You'll also learn more about our new
USPS Forever stamps,
the Reyn Spooner Aloha shirt collaboration,
Sherman's Lagoons Comics,
and an exciting new partnership
with National Geographic Society.
And on Thursday,
join the webinar to hear an overview of the partnership
between the Ocean Exploration Trust
and the key Monument stakeholders,
as well as the summarization of the scientific discoveries
of the recent
deep-sea explorations of Papahanaumokuakea.
For our "Submerged North Carolina,"
we will have two webinars coming up that we know the names.
Well, we know that they're coming up.
December 6 will be Kyra Duffley.
She's a multimedia specialist with
The Mariners Museum and Park,
and she's gonna talk us through some of the paintings
that were created
in the past
to honor and remember the night the USS Monitor
sank off the North Carolina coast.
And then January 31st,
we have the exciting possibility or
probability of having Captain Bobbie Scholley.
She's the US Navy retired captain.
She led the expedition in 2002
to recover the Monitor's turret.
So come hear about the challenges the expedition faced
and all the triumphs,
and much, much more.
And, of course,
we always invite you to follow us on social media
to stay in touch with what's happening in the sanctuary.
And lastly, as you exit the webinar,
there is a short survey
for formal and informal educators.
If you are an educator,
NOAA would really appreciate it
if you just take a minute or two
to complete the survey.
Your answers will help NOAA develop future webinars
to meet your needs,
and your participation is always voluntary
and your answers are completely anonymous.
So, once again,
I want to thank you, Melissa,
for a great presentation
and thank all of you
for joining us today.
Have a wonderful day
and this concludes the presentation for all.