Carroll volunteers working to restore cemetery for black veterans, 'make amends' for vandalism, decay
Carroll County TimesNov 01, 2019
Since then, the cemetery has endured not just normal wear and tear, but also vandalism, leaving some of the plots unmarked and headstones eroded and shattered. About 50 headstones have been destroyed or taken, according to records from the
Now, more than 140 years after the cemetery's founding,
"Right now we're just identifying the graves, that a lot of the headstones are no longer with us. So we're trying to locate where people are buried so we can put temporary crosses in to identify grave sites," said
According to Kloss, the cemetery was created because black individuals weren't allowed to be buried within
The
"Their attendance went down and they no longer had either the physical or the monetary resources to take care of it," Kloss said. "So, a lot of people ?-- state police did it for a while, various churches took it for a while. And six years ago, the Knight of Columbus took it over and we've had it ever since."
In the late 1990s,
"George loves this place, I mean, absolutely loves it, knows everything there is to know about it. He did a lot of the repairing of stones and that kind of thing by himself," said
Cimino has been working with the
Despite their efforts, the cemetery was in poor condition by the time the
"When we got here, the grass was 4 feet high, and we came here to put flags out at the veterans' stones, we couldn't find them. Everything was knocked down or it was buried, and it really touched my heart that the service that they gave to the country and they're just forgotten," said
The cemetery has also been deliberately damaged by an organized hate group, Greul said.
It isn't all bad -- some of the stones, according to Kloss, just need to be cleaned and polished.
As of
The cemetery has a "Stranger's Row," where seven people are buried, though it would be next to impossible to identify them now, Kloss said. Unidentified people can still be buried there today at four plots, though the decision of who can would rest with the
According to
"That is relatively new science. It comes in handy now for this kind of work, it's perfect," Kloss said. "But I wish they would have done this like 20 years ago, that would've made it easier."
For each body that they find without a headstone, Greul has welded crosses to place at the unmarked graves until they figure out who is buried there.
So far, Greul has welded 28 crosses out of reinforcing bar, commonly known as rebar, which took "quite some time" for him to do but only cost about
"It's worth it. I don't care what color they were," Greul said. "Figuring it all out is opening everything up."
Greul is also making headstones for the unmarked graves that also only cost him about
"I wanted to be able to put a name back for the people that are missing, and we were trying to figure out how we could do it cost effectively," he said. "So I took a little cardboard box, got some concrete, bought a set of concrete stamps, and I can make that headstone for two bucks. Then, we can put it in the ground and then we'll be putting the names back that have been erased forever."
Several businesses in the area have pitched in their part toward maintaining that history by donating their time, money or even a discount.
According to Kloss, the Wawa located next to the cemetery has donated about
Both Kloss and Cimino are urging people who might have information about those buried at the cemetery to help identify some of the unmarked grave sites.
"If your family owns a plot here, and maybe there's a paper in the family Bible or something ?-- we don't want the original but can we have a copy of it? So that we can see, 'Yes, this family owns this plot' so that we can identify who has the right to come in here," Cimino said.
There are future plans to keep improving the cemetery in addition to identifying the bodies and providing headstones to the graves.
The
They would also like to get large floodlights to shine on the cemetery from dusk to dawn, in hopes the light will prevent people from causing damage to the cemetery.
Cimino hopes restoring the cemetery will encourage young black
"What I hope is that the younger generation of black families will say, 'Yes, this is ours. We'll take care of it, we're responsible for it, we'll do it.' It's something that we want to kind of restore to what it should be and keep it that way so people don't forget again," Cimino said. "They don't lose track of who's here and why they're here, and what's the story."
If people don't grasp the significance behind the history of the cemetery, they will be doomed to repeat it, Cimino said.
"It's everybody's history. It's not just one group's history. It's all
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