People and communities
Mount Peace: lost burial records and the work of recovery
Documented history · Sources compared
Volunteers faced hidden stones and missing maps while restoring an African American cemetery.
A cemetery and its missing paperwork
The cemetery association dates its founding to 1900. WHYY’s 2017 reporting distinguishes the cemetery’s opening in 1902 and describes a 1950s fire that destroyed plot maps and burial records. That loss made identifying individual graves harder than simply clearing vegetation. Mount Peace Cemetery Association.
Restoration meant repeated physical work
Trustee Yolanda Romero recalled her parents organizing volunteer cleanups beginning in 1980. Stones concealed in the growth damaged mowers; another volunteer described cutting weeds before mowing so he could find them. The report also records a precise limit: military records placed Medal of Honor recipient John Lawson in the cemetery, but his exact grave had not been located despite a commemorative marker installed in 2004. The marker and the known burial location were therefore different kinds of evidence. WHYY, April 25, 2017.
Sources and research limits
Interviews establish what volunteers reported in 2017. The unresolved grave location is not presented as a verified current condition, and no original plot book was available for inspection.