People, places and memory
Recovering the history of Tabernacle’s AME cemetery
Deed and community research; unmarked burials investigated
A deed, a missing church and descendant research recover a Black community’s history along Carranza Road.
Land for worship and burial
The society’s AME history identifies an October 13, 1868 conveyance from John and Mary Ann Gray for a church and burial ground. Its named trustees connect the site to local Black residents, rather than leaving it an anonymous cemetery. A 1938 WPA map preserves the church foundation and a veteran’s grave after the building itself had vanished.
Searching without names on stones
Gail Corey’s Remember the Forgotten report describes a project begun in 2023 combining genealogical work, descendant interviews and Pinelands Commission ground-penetrating radar. Radar recorded subsurface anomalies, including a possible unmarked grave near known burials. An anomaly is not automatically a grave, and a grave location would not by itself identify its occupant.
Sources and research limits
The research also built relationships with Friendship AME Church in Browns Mills. It explicitly finds no evidence establishing a Maroon settlement at this site. That attractive hypothesis should remain a question, while documented landholding, worship and burial receive attention in their own right.