Reclaiming neglected rural cemeteries Story and photos by Jim Plott
Ashleigh Staples of Birmingham looks over a grave at Auburn’s Pine Hill Cemetery.
J
ordan Mahaffey doesn’t see dead people.
Instead, her vision when visiting a cemetery has more to do with survivors than deceased. That’s because Mahaffey, a history graduate from the University of West Alabama, is more apt to pay attention to what is on top of the grave than what’s in it. “I see artifacts,” Mahaffey says, referring to headstones and grave 20 OCTOBER 2017
markers. “They provide you with a history of the community and how individuals felt about that person.” On this day, however, Mahaffey, along with a dozen or more volunteers and an archeological team from the University of Alabama, are helping reclaim an almost forgotten, overgrown and unmarked cemetery situated just outside the fenced-in Morning www.alabamaliving.coop