finding the lost

For over 40 years, some people in Statesville, North Carolina believed that an abandoned African American church cemetery had been destroyed by the organization then known as the Statesville Redevelopment Commission, later becoming the Statesville Housing Authority. In 2010, the Statesville Record & Landmark reported a story where residents claimed that the site had been bulldozed over to make way for the houses that are now on Adams Street and East Raleigh Avenue, just south of Statesville. My initial thought was, “There is no way. I cannot believe that an entire cemetery would be wiped away by a housing development.”

But then again, it has happened across the country. Especially with cemeteries of marginalized communities like African American and Native populations.

Then I started walking the property of the Statesville Housing Authority. We had been talking with several different people; some lived in the community currently, some grew up there, some remembered when the church was there, and others remembered seeing the cemetery and swore it was still there! One description had us walking along the railroad tracks searching the tree line and wondering if the houses on Adams Street were built over top of it. Another report claimed that the cemetery was actually behind the first cluster of houses on Raleigh Avenue. Someone else said they thought it was along the railroad tracks but closer to Garner Bagnal Boulevard.

Each and every time I went out there, I made my step goal for the day. We walked over what felt like was every inch of SHA property. Then I got to thinking, “Well, surely if it was not destroyed, we would have found it by now!”

We finally went out to visit the site with people who knew where it was, and I am thrilled beyond belief to announce that it was NOT in fact destroyed. It is still there! The people buried here are not my ancestors, but I got a little emotional standing in the place for the first time. I felt like I had found long-lost friends. These people had been mostly forgotten, and those who remembered them thought their final resting place had been desecrated. They are forgotten no longer.

The history of the Stearn’s Temple goes back to the 1920s when C.A. Stearns, a major developer in town, recruited African American laborers from Georgia to come to Statesville to work for him. Georgia communities had been devastated by the boll weevil invasion and as a result, crops had been destroyed and working opportunities dried up. Eager to earn a living, they migrated to Statesville to work for C.A. Stearns whose name would grace the building that housed the Playhouse Theatre.

African American workers picking cotton in the Georgia fields prior to the boll weevil invasion. Photo from Library of Congress, circa 1897-1898.

Prior to coming to Statesville, Iredell County only had five African Americans born in Georgia living here, according to the 1920 census. By the 1930 census, almost 250 Georgia-born African Americans lived in the county. That’s quite the increase. Unfortunately, these newcomers were not always welcomed in Statesville. They were seen as outsiders and others. They were looked down upon for “not being from here,” or taking jobs away from native Statesville residents. An already marginalized community became even more isolated and built their own community, which included their own church. Stearn’s Temple was a C.M.E., or Colored Methodist Episcopal, church. Prior to the arrival of the Georgian Blacks, there was no C.M.E. church in the county. Stearn’s Temple adopted the name Holsey Memorial as early as 1930 when the church building was located on Washington Avenue (across from the current location of Purple Heart Homes). We know this because the site is labeled in the 1930 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. The Holsey Memorial C.M.E. congregation is still active and they meet in a beautiful building on Mulberry Street.

In 1924, Stearns gave land to the church congregation so they could build a structure and use it as a cemetery. The plat map for this transaction is still available and you can see where the plans had set aside a portion for a burial ground. According to the plat map, several roads can be seen and many of them still exist, although the layout of the area has changed a great deal. Winston and Durham at one point crossed what is now Shelton Avenue and made its way through this community. Washington Avenue came all the way south until the creation of US 70/Garner Bagnal. The first burial that we know of took place in 1925 for an infant named Willie Hazel McWhorter (photo below).

L-R Bond McWhorter, Druscilla Bond McWhorter, Willie Hazel McWhorter

Sometime between 1924 and 1930, the church relocated to the Washington address, and it stayed there for a long time until the congregation purchased the current building on South Mulberry Street. Even though the church had moved, burials still continued in the cemetery. The last documented burial we know of was in 1948 for a woman named Sallie Loftin who died in a fire at her home. According to death certificates and newspaper death announcements, there are a confirmed 81 people buried at this site, all of whom have been added to the cemetery’s listing on Find A Grave.

Since being rediscovered (appropriately on the last day of Black History Month), we have found two stone markers and 17 metal funeral home markers. The funeral home markers were mostly found with a metal detector and a little bit of digging. It is my theory that the rumors about the housing development "plowing up" the cemetery are partially true. Most of the visible graves are located at the bottom of a hill. There are several rental housing units at the top of the hill and more than likely, dirt was brought in to backfill the area as the construction was taking place. I believe that either some of the dirt was pushed toward the cemetery, or erosion over the last 40 years has caused dirt to settle over the markers. Many of the funeral home markers were found after digging almost a foot underground, which is not common. These markers would have been placed by the funeral home marker around the date of death and would not be removed unless a headstone was replacing it. This community was not able to afford many headstones, so the funeral home markers were the only indication of a grave and therefore, would not be relocated. We found a metal marker with the patent dates of 1925 and 1927 on it, matching the years of the earlier burials in the cemetery.

The best part of looking for markers came on the second day of searching. Only one marker had a name, and even it had no dates. In the case of the funeral home markers, the paper inside the glass has disintegrated over time, bearing no information. I was hoping to find just one more marker with a name on it.

That's the day we found Flossie.

Buried almost a foot below the dirt, our metal detector went crazy so we began to dig until we found the metal marker of Flossie White. She was born in 1891 and died March 25 or 26, 1944 (the death certificate and marker have two different days). According to her death certificate, she was buried at "Stern's Temple", which validated our claim that this cemetery belonged to the church. While every single marker is important, and I look forward to finding more, Flossie is even more special because her descendants are now able to see the physical place where she is buried. It was an honor to find her marker and be able to tell her story.

Finding this cemetery was such a collective effort and I cannot thank the community residents enough for speaking with us at the library in an effort to locate this sacred site. Going forward, there are no current plans to restore the place, however the Statesville Housing Authority has allowed us to continue looking for graves. Being on private property owned by an entity whose income is primarily federally funded; the SHA will not be able to pay for any restoration of this site. They are, however, amenable to erecting a sign with the names of those buried there, and they also said they would support a nonprofit organization if they were able to receive grant funds to help restore the site. This is progress and definitely an upgrade from the rumors of the last 40 years.

Finding this site has been such an uplifting and positive experience. I am truly excited to see what the future holds for this site and to see how the community can move forward knowing that it was not destroyed. More importantly, the stories of those buried here are finally being told because, as I always say, every burial is a story. Stay tuned for more stories from Stearn's Temple Cemetery as they are discovered!