Title

Creator

Subject

Subject

Keyword: cemeteries ; burial customs ; undertakers

Description

Mr. Gibson remembers playing in the cemetery as a child.  He describes the efforts of the South Asheville Cemetery Association to reclaim and restore the abandoned cemetery.  The Cemetery Association, of which Mr. Gibson is president, is working to see the cemetery designated an Historic Site.

Publisher

D. H. Ramsey Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville, NC, 28804

Contributor

Date

Electronic Record Issued: 2001-07-31

Type

Sound ; Text

Format

Identifier

Source

OH 90.1: South Asheville Colored Cemetery Oral History Collection, D.H. Ramsey Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville 28804

Language

English

Relation

Coverage

Acquisition

Donor number: 138 ;  Date of acquisition: 1990-05-02

Processed By

Interview Date

List of Names

Abstract:

MR. ARMMOND: Lewis Armmond here.  I am working on the oral history project concerning the South Asheville Colored Cemetery.  Today is August 2, 1989, it is approximately 11:53 a.m., and I am in the home of Mr. George Gibson. This is the first of a series of interview we intend to do on the oral history of the South Asheville Cemetery, but before I start the interview I will give a brief background of and purpose for this project. The project has been funded by the North Carolina Council on Humanities and also in part by the City of Asheville. We are attempting to do as complete as possible an oral history of the South Asheville Cemetery which, is nearly 200 years old and was used exclusively by the black residents of Asheville. We are tyring to unearth the history of this cemetery in an effort to establish it as a historic memorial to the people in this area, both living and dead. Mr. Gibson may I start the interview by asking how long you have been a resident in the Asheville area?

MR. GIBSON: I have been a resident in the Asheville area for more than 60 years. I was born and raised here.

MR. ARMMOND: Would you please expound on your knowledge of the cemetery, its significance to you and whether or not you have friends and/or relatives buried there.

MR. GIBSON: When I was a boy here in Asheville I played near the cemetery because I went to church and Sunday School at the church there.  I remember my playmates and I would read the headstones: "He's At Rest," "He Kept The Faith," "He Fought A Good Fight," and so on. Relating the marking on the headstones to what we had learned in Sunday School was a great pastime of ours and gave us a better understanding of the Word, and so made our Faith stronger. Now, what frightened me as a boy about the cemetery was the fact that the graves were dug so deep. That gave me a fear of being buried, but I overcame that in later years because my brother-in-law became the grave digger there, and I would hang around there with him and began to understand the signifiance of the deepness of the grave. Yes, I have great memories of the cemetery, and it has been a dream of mine to see the cemetery restored.

MR. ARMMOND: You mentioned the fact that the graves were dug very deep. Do you know exactly how deep they were dug and why?

MR. GIBSON: Yes, the graves were dug 6 feet deep, sometimes a little deeper, but always at least 6 feet. That was the tradition.

MR. ARMMOND: Mr. Gibson, could you give us the names of friends and or relatives that you have buried in the South Asheville Colored Cemetery?

MR. GIBSON: I don't have any relatives buried there, but there are friends and neighbors from the South Asheville community and the St. Mark AME Methodist Church that I remember that are buried there. There was: Robert Lynch; Harriet Keebler; Reverend Brewer's brother Tommy; and his sister; Tom Smathers and his son, Mammie Sly, Ed Watson, George Avery, who was a Civil War Veteran and was at one time part owner and caretaker of the cemetery. Those are just a few of the people I remember being buried there. I knew more of them and there are many, many more buried there that I didn't know. Now some of the grave markers are still there, but most are not. I know that the Keeblers and the Brewers markers are not there anymore, but I know where the graves are. The others I mentioned, their markers are still there. The descendents of most all buried there are still in the Asheville area, and I'm sure that some of them could and would help to find and identify the grave sites of their relatives whether with, or without markers.

MR. ARMMOND: Now you mentioned that Mr. George Avery was part owner of the cemetery.   Could you give us a more detailed accounting of the fact?

MR. GIBSON: Yes, Mr. George Avery was a member of the St. Mark AME Methodist Church, and his former slaveholders, the McDowells, designated part of the land there to him for the purpose of the cemetery through the church and the other part of the cemetery was designated to the public for burial of other blacks who were not members of St. Mark. Those people who buried their relatives there had to pay the McDowell family $1.00 per grave. You see at that time, there was no public burial ground for blacks, and so if one was not affiliated with a church that had its own burial ground, they would then have to pay a $1.00 fee to have their relatives buried here. Then in later years the entire cemetery was deeded over to Mr. Avery.

MR. ARMMOND: Approximately how many acres does the Cemetery take?

MR. GIBSON: I don't know the exact acreage, but there are deeds that have the acreage information, and I believe that that deed is in the hands of Mrs. Augusta Young.

MR. ARMMOND: Mr. Gibson, could you tell us when the cemetery was closed and why?

MR. GIBSON: Well, the last burial took place in the cemetery in 1943 when the brother of Mr. Robert Lynch was buried there. The cemetery was closed when the city started to expand their boundaries to include Kenilworth as part of the city limits. South Asheville/Kenilworth was at one time part of the county, but when the city extended the limits to include the South Asheville/Kenilworth area, that closed the cemetery because there was an ordinance against burying in the city limits.

MR. ARMMOND: When the boundaries were changed, is that when the whites began to move into the Kenilworth area?

MR. GIBSON: Whites have always lived in Kenilworth. At one time the part of Kenilworth where the blacks lived was called South Asheville and the part where the whites lived was called Kenilworth. When the city changed the boundaries, the whole area was reclassified Kenilworth and the areas of Biltmore Forest, Shiloh, Biltmore and Petersburg were reclassified South Asheville.

MR. ARMMOND: Mr. Gibson, what has been the attitude of your friends and neighbors here in the Kenilworth area and the black population of Asheville in general in regards to the work going on here to restore the cemetery and have it classified as a Historic Site?

MR. GIBSON: Well, when the cemetery was first abandoned, the people who had relatives buried here would come out and take care of their own relatives' plots or bring flowers and such. Then people started burying their relatives at Riverside, Sunset and Violet Hill. Sunset and Violet Hill were the two black-owned cemeteries. As time passed the South Asheville cemetery began to grow over with weeds and the older relatives could not get to the graves of their loved one to care for them or visit. Then as the elders passed away, they were buried in one of the other cemeteries. So the new generation of relatives to the people buried in the South Asheville Cemetery did not know of their ancestors' buried there until the enactment of this project.

MR. ARMMOND: Were there any attempts before now to organize an upkeep association or society for the cemetery after it was first closed?

MR. GIBSON: I have been working with the Volunteers of Kenilworth for 20 years in an effort to upkeep and restore the cemetery, but funding was always a problem. Both the blacks and whites of Kenilworth have always worked together for the betterment of the Kenilworth community, so when the Kenilworth area was surveyed for the building of condominiums; the Kenilworth Association formed a committee, "The South Asheville Cemetery Association", in an attempt to save the cemetery and surrounding area from being destroyed by the condominium project. The Cemetery Committee is made up of persons who have relatives and or friends buried there. I am the President of this committee, Irene Alexander is the Secretary, Hunter Watson is the Treasurer and Johnny Baxter, Forest Hardy, and Johnny Hemphill are our Coordinators. These people have been the faithful who have stuck with us through everything. We have had others that have come and gone and promises of donations toward the project that have not materialized, but these few hold steadfast and faithful toward our goal for the cemetery's restoration and our dream of seeing it designated a Historic Site.

MR. ARMMOND: Has the Oral History Project had any effect on the Cemetery Committee's efforts to restore the cemetery?

MR. GIBSON: Yes! Very much so.  The Oral History Project has publicized our efforts city wide, rekindling the interest of the older generation of the community who had given up on the restoration efforts as a lost cause and sparking new interest in the younger generation of people who never knew of the cemetery or that they had kin/ancestors buried there. We have plans to invite the public to a clean-up of the cemetery, giving the young people the opportunity to see the cemetery as it is now and giving them an understanding of the importance of restoring and preserving the resting place of their ancestors.

MR. ARMMOND: On that note of hopeful anticipation for the success of the Oral History Project in respect to the restoration and preservation of the South Asheville Colored Cemetery, I will conclude my interview with Mr. George Gibson. Thank you, Mr. Gibson.