Finding Hope on the Bittersweet Path

Dr. Julia Moore works in the department of Religious Studies at UNC Charlotte. She is also an ordained Presbyterian minister. Dr. Moore, along with Columbia Seminary’s archivist Caitlin Reeves Greenamyre, has spent time searching through and exploring Columbia Seminary’s extensive archives. The archives—specifically church records, Presbytery and session minutes, and other primary source records—used in conjunction with cemetery sextant records, family histories, and probate records have revealed information on the burial grounds of enslaved persons. Dr. Moore and her students have not only pieced together clues to tell unwritten histories, they’ve found the stories of families.

While doing research on her second book about the history of Black Presbyterians in Mecklenberg County, North Carolina, Dr. Moore began looking deep in the session records of colonial and antebellum era churches in the area. “Sometimes in the back of session books I would find the names of the enslaved persons. I would wonder where they were [buried]. The church historian would motion out to a side area of a cemetery or some shrubbery that was behind a wall and say, ‘Well our African American members are buried behind the wall or behind the shrub.’ That really fascinated me because I didn’t realize how segregation was still very much a part of church landscapes here in the South—some of the walls are still up, some of the shrubs are still up,” says Dr. Moore. “But the historic white churches still have enslaved persons’ burial grounds. They’re just hiding under periwinkle or fall leaves or bushes. They’re tucked away in cemeteries, and they look like nobody has attended to them since the colonial period, sometimes.”

Because enslaved persons’ gravesites were rarely marked with traditional tombstones, Dr. Moore has to look for other markers. “Enslaved human beings created their own markers. They have certain stones—sometimes they’re shaped in the figure of an eye which means that the ancestors are watching over that person—sometimes they’re plain stones. Every now and then you’ll see pieces of cut glass, or even shells around the grave sites and those will be markers as well, but those are few and far between. You have to know how the stones look. And then there are trees, usually cedar, sometimes birch trees, planted. You have to know the trees. So in certain respects there were markers, but they were markers that were only accessible to the African Americans who were able to make use of them.”

When all the clues point to an enslaved person burial ground, Dr. Moore can confirm her findings with ground-penetrating radar. “If churches are willing to work with me, I will bring in the ground-penetrating radar team and they will provide scientific data on how many people are buried and the ways in which they are buried, in terms of how deep the graves are placed, the positions of those interred, which adds scientific authentication to the historical data noted in church archives

Many African Americans are unaware of where their enslaved and formally enslaved ancestors are buried. “When I preach at different Black Presbyterian churches around Mecklenburg County, I would ask parishioners, ‘Did you know that your ancestors are buried are on that church property?’ Many of them could recollect how their ancestors came from a particular white church, but they would have no idea that their ancestors may be buried in a segregated part of that church’s cemetery. Some Black Presbyterians have would attempt to go and honor their ancestors only to find that there were no burial markers for their loved ones or worse, the burial plot have been neglected and grown over with foliage. These reports from Black Presbyterians and my own inability to locate markers of Black Presbyterians sparked an initiative connected to my second book project to help both White and Black Presbyterians discover their ancestors and their shared connection to slavery. In this respect, I’m looking at the ways in Black and White Presbyterians churches still share burial grounds and a history that needs to be uncovered,” she says.

We asked her if she had any “Aha!” moments while researching in the C. Benton Kline, Jr. Special Collections and Archives at Columbia.

Dr. Moore told the story of a Black Presbyterian, who had seen a marker with her family surname on it at the enslaved burial site. She was shocked to see her family name and had no idea that her ancestors were still buried, albeit in a segregated space in the White Presbyterian just a few miles from her own church. She wanted to know more and so Dr. Moore was allowed to have her students investigate the ancestry of the woman’s family. The discovery her students made regarding the ancestor of the woman’s family was transformative as the students were able to uncover the ancestry of her family well beyond the Civil War era as well as point her to the family to burial grounds that had not known.

“We all met on Zoom and the students were able to share some of the information they found on the family members with the family. Members of attended the Zoom session from all over the nation to hear more about their lost family members. The family was able to see pictures of a grave site unknown to them, a register of deed, and even a will that revealed how their family members were sold during slavery--it was a bittersweet moment for the family, but it was a very impactful time of discovery and connection to their ancestors.”

Dr. Moore has this advice for any church that wants to tell a fuller picture of their church history and acknowledge the Black members, though enslaved, that were a part of their worshiping community; “I think the first thing churches can do is look at their session records. Start reading those church minutes that date back to the antebellum period and see if there are enslaved human beings listed as “servants” or “congregants”. Take a second look at your church burial ground and notice the areas that have unfortunately been left to neglect. Find the overgrown shrubbery or the periwinkle that covers old stones. That’s probably where an enslaved burial ground exists which hold the remains of Black human beings that were once a part of the collected worshiping community. Then take a research trip to the John Bulow Campbell Library’s Special Collections. Cross reference the names of slave owners, of the plantations, and the names of enslaved persons listed in the session records. The wonderful thing about Presbyterians, they take notes and record almost everything. One place of investigation that may be especially fruitful are the sermon notes of White Presbyterian ministers who pastored slave-owning congregations during the antebellum period. It wasn’t unusual for Presbyterian ministers to record marriages of enslaved people.” Finally consider contacting your local genealogical society for more information. This kind of research journey can help so many people discover family members lost to the legacies of slavery and it can help churches—White and Black—take substantive steps to heal the rifts of racism in our faith communities.

“When Dr. Moore was here over the summer, we wondered ‘What does it look like in the future for us to continue to collaborate?’ It’s almost like grief ministry that Dr. Moore is doing,” says Greenamyre. “I experience that a lot with donors who come to the archives. There is an emotional side to using the archives that catches people off guard. We’re just not practiced in using primary sources and don’t realize the emotional response people may have. But I believe primary sources can be a path to healing.”

“I think the biggest challenge for churches is to tell the fuller story of their church history, because many church histories don’t talk about the enslaved people that were part of their church membership rolls,” says Dr. Moore. “I think starting such a journey is not easy and it’s going to be full of challenges, especially if the descendants of those slave owners are still living and active in the church. But it is doing a great ministry of reconnecting, not just Black people to their ancestors, but Black and white people together and retelling the fuller story of the Body of Christ in America amid a history complicated by race. Such an endeavor requires the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit to seek the truth and walk in forgiveness towards one another and our Christian ancestors. In this respect, the Body of Christ is turning to one of the most powerful imperatives of the Gospel—to love one’s neighbor as theirself.”

To learn more about Dr. Moore’s ministry, and the ways she helps churches on their journey of rediscovery, visit www.mooregraceministries.com/services.

You can learn more about the John Bulow Campbell Library’s C. Benton Kline Special Collections and Archives at www.ctsnet.edu/library/special-collections-and-archives/ or by contacting Caitlin Reeves Greenamyre at greenamyrec@ctsnet.edu.