At least 550 graves of African Americans were found at the St. George African Methodist Episcopal Church cemetery in Lewes, Delaware, according to WBOC. The cemetery was closed in 1945 and only had records indicating 82 people were buried there.
The graves were discovered by the Greater Lewes Foundation, Edward Otter Inc. and Horsley Archaeological Prospection LLC while conducting research. Edward Otter Inc. and Horsley Archaeological Prospection LLC used a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) on the property and found unknown graves. Other graves with headstones were also unmarked due to erosion.
However, the GPR is not 100 percent accurate. Because bodies were often stacked when buried, more graves could be found.
Louis Riley was notified that he had more than 20 relatives buried at the cemetery. Riley lives in Lewes and found that his great-great-grandfather was the oldest burial at the cemetery, laid to rest in 1848.
“It’s just so revealing to me to know that they can find out who some of my family are,” said Riley. “It just, it just warms my heart.”
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The search also discovered several numbered pillars thought to be used to find graves, but the numbers were also eroded, and records for the markers were lost. Mike Rawl is the Director of the Greater Lewes Foundation and said that Black people weren’t allowed to be buried anywhere else in the area for at least 100 years.
“The cemetery was the only place to inter African Americans for about 100 years in Lewes and that makes it a very significant remaining artifact of the African American life in Lewes,” Rawl said.
There is a long, sad history in the country of the desecration of Black cemeteries. The University of Virginia and many other colleges allowed medical students to steal the newly deceased bodies of slaves and freed Black people from cemeteries for research in the 1800s.
Unfortunately, it was a common practice to steal Black bodies and two hundred years later, Black cemeteries are still being targeted. The grave of a Black Civil War veteran in Massachusetts was desecrated in 2018, and several cemeteries in Washington, D.C. were relocated and the headstones were thrown away in the Potomac River. Most graves were left unidentified after the relocation.
The Greater Lewes Foundation said they would continue to identify unknown people buried in the cemetery and notify their relatives. Lewes residents Pam Brown and Dawnell White are funding the research.
