Chesterfield County, VA, is now in the midst of a bit of an uproar over a
well-preserved and, until the lawyers got busy, well-protected cemetery
that contains what is likely to be a slave buried next to the master's
children,

This is the Moody Cemetery, wherein several generations of the family
repose, including William Lewis Moody:
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/MM/fmo21.html

Near the ornate marble head stones of two children is a simple marble stone
marked only "Cary"  with a footstone some 5 feet away indicating an adult
grave.  It is believed that this is the last resting place of one of the
family slaves, but research as to the whole story is still in process.

The site and some 80 acres of surrounding land were preserved in a
conservation easement or land trust by the last property owner.  It is now
in the hands of a Trust that the lady founded but the managers seems to see
it only as a 7 million dollar chunk of real estate.  They are petitioning
the State to have the property restrictions removed so they can turn it
inot housing or a shopping center.  What worries some is the precident of
having a perpetual easement or trust abolished so the land could be
developed, but many others are actively fighting the move because of the
cemetery and its probable marked slave burial.
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/MM/fmo21.html

So much for the meaning of "Trust" and "in perpetuity."

In the other sites I know in Chesterfield Co., located between the James
and Appomattox Rivers, and other sections of this part of the state of VA,
the slave or black cemeteries are located seperate from the white
cemeteries.  They are often within view of each other or almost adjacent,
but to my knowledged are they are not mingled (save, of course, for the
occasional slave or servant who was "like one of the family.")

         Dan W.


At 2/10/03 12:09 PM, you wrote:
>Hello HISTARCHers:
>
>I'm looking at a 19th-century plantation cemetery
>(family plot) that contains both the burials of the
>family and the burials of the slaves, and this strikes
>me as very unusual.
>
>I can't think of any plantations where the slaves and
>the owners are buried together; usually, in my
>experience, the family plot is perched on a bluff
>overlooking the James River and the slaves are buried
>someplace else (at a separate, spatially distinct
>location).
>
>Has anyone else run into something like this before?
>I know that larger community burial grounds and church
>burial grounds will have both, but I was hoping to
>find comparative late 18th century or antebellum
>plantation examples, similar to this particular site.
>
>Dane Magoon
>[log in to unmask]
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
>http://mailplus.yahoo.com