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Several
people are working to restore cemeteries and stones. By Ron Brown,
WGEM News Reporter. Hannibal, Missouri: Benjamin Franklin once
said: "Show me your cemeteries and I'll tell you what kind of
people you have." He was talking about white cemeteries. In
Franklin's time and until slavery was finally abolished in 1865,
blacks were not buried in the worst public cemetery Franklin ever
saw. Slaves buried their own in meager patches of ground during
night-time torch-lit ceremonies after the workday was done. The
graves were crudely marked with wooden slabs, sticks or rocks, if
they were marked at all. Consider the lack of slave graves in
Marion County. From the early to mid-1800s thousands lived in and
around Marion County - thousands of black domestic servants and
field hands, thousands of black men, black women and black chidren
who were bought and sold at the Marion County Courthouse in
Palmyra. But no one can say for sure where these thousands of
slaves lie buried. Because they were slaves no one knows. Only one
slave cemetery is known to exist in this area, on a small plot of
ground now wooded over on a former farm by U. S. 61 near Hannibal.
In a tiny one-acre plot behind the main house a dozen crudely
marked graves are visible in a cluster. Plain rocks jutting out
inches from the earth now identify where the one-time slaves lie
buried. Under brush and trees obscure up to two dozen more.
"The significance of the cemetery is - there are 40 slaves
buried out here according to family tradition, said Terrell
Dempsey, a Hannibal historian." "Of course, slave graves
generally are not marked. Slaves couldn't read or write. Slaves
were just property." "But the slaves in the cemetery
identified the graves themselves by putting simple pieces of stone
in the ground. Just by coming out here and raking the leaves away,
I've located 11 of the stones" "I think they're a very
eloquent statement because, they obviously wanted to be
remembered." The slaves belonged to JOHN BUSH an early
Hannibal pioneer who arrived in 1816. The property, along with the
graveyard remains in the family, owned today by BUSH'S
great-grandson, LOU GORDON. "I think its important to
remember that this was a part of history that's not really that
well documented by any race", Gordon said. "The whites
didn't document them (slaves) and they weren't able to document
themselves so just having them here on my property is something
that needs to be preserved." Of the thousands of slaves
surely buried in and around Marion County, there is but one other
known slave grave in NorthEast Missouri. East of BUSH'S cemetery
lies the dilapidated Old Baptist Cemetery in Hannibal. It counts
among its many occupants one of the most extraordinary graves in
American History, that of Agnes Flauntleroy. Her birthdate was
unknown. Only her date of death is recorded. She died a slave on
July 16, 1855. We know this because Flauntleroy's grave has a
commercially produced tombstone and those on slaves graves are
"as scarce as hen's teeth," Dempsey said. It's certain
that Flauntleroy was well known to Hannibal's favorite son, Samuel
L. Clemens, the beloved author of Mark Twain. Etched into her
tombstone is the engraving that Flauntleroy, in death as in life,
was the slave of Spohia Hawkins, a Clemens neighbor and the mother
of Laura Hawkins, Twain's literary model for everything lovely and
beautiful about a young girl - Becky Thatcher. There is a movement
under was to preserve Flauntleroy's disintegrating limestone grave
marker. It's withering away after years of neglect in the
elements. Dempsey and others have begun collecting donations with
the "AGNES FLAUNTLEROY PRESERVATION FUND" at Hannibal
National Bank. Once enough money is collected, the tombstone will
be encased in a protective sheath. On the other side of town, LOU
GORDON, is working with archeologists and historians to document
and preserve for future generations the slave graveyard behind his
home. Benjamin Franklin would no doubt approve.
POSTSCRIPT:
John Bush (1799-1877) was my g-g-grandfather. He migrated from the
Grassy Creek vicinity of Pendleton Co., Kentucky. He was married
to Margaret Gardner (also a migrant from Pendleton Co., Ky.) in
the home of Samuel Conway, Sr. who was the first owner of the land
on which the slave cemetery is located. I received this article
from John H. Bowles several days ago. John operates a farm there
in Marion County.
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