Introduction

            Hey everyone! My name is Lareyne and I am the new summer intern at the Florida Historical Society. With the help of the Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN), I will be recording some of Brevard County’s historic cemeteries to the Florida Master Site File (FMSF). What is the Florida Master Site File, you ask? The FMSF is the official inventory of historical and cultural resources for the state of Florida. In other words, they keep a record of things like archaeological sites and historic places such as buildings, cemeteries and bridges, in order to protect them. So in a nutshell, my job will be to visit various cemeteries, fill out a Historical Cemetery Form for each one (these forms detail the cemetery’s location, history and description) and attach photos and any other researched material I may find on the property. For those of you that are interested, here is a great blog that I found. It was written by the outreach staff from FPAN’s Northeast Florida branch and it briefly discusses how to record a historic cemetery on the FMSF: http://fpangoingpublic.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-to-record-historic-cemetery-on.html.

            So what could possibly be threatening our cemeteries, and what is so important about cemeteries anyway? For starters, cemeteries are not only important for honoring the dead, but they tell a story about our past. Things such as grave goods, types of burials, and even different kinds of headstones can tell a lot about the person that is buried, not to mention, it paints a picture of the community and way of life at the time. Protection of a threatened cemetery is not just a human right that the deceased are entitled to, but it is also a way to preserve significant cultural resources. Many historical cemeteries are in disrepair due to neglect. Some of them fall through the cracks after their owners pass away, and this is especially so if there was no one recently visiting the deceased buried there. Sadly, some people have the “out of sight, out of mind” mentality in this situation: no one owns it, no one visits it, and no one cares for it. All cemeteries in general are threatened by many problems, such as vandalism, looting, erosion, the wearing of headstones, and biological impacts such as moss and overgrown tree roots. Without proper maintenance, these sites fall into utter disrepair and irreplaceable knowledge of our past is lost. FPAN periodically conducts a Cemetery Resources Protection Training (CRPT) workshop that instructs on how to record gravesites, properly clean headstones and develop on-going protection strategies. For more information, please contact your local branch of FPAN via this link: http://www.flpublicarchaeology.org/.

            Besides the cemetery recording project, I will be doing a separate project of my own that ties into the recording project. At the conclusion of my internship, I will be presenting a conference level poster comparing the present day condition of historical African American cemeteries against that of White cemeteries. This past Thursday, I visited three cemeteries in Merritt Island: Georgiana and St. Luke’s (both White cemeteries) and White Lily (an African American cemetery). Georgiana was well maintained and had very few threats. I noted a few graves that were slightly sunken down and a few areas where tree roots were becoming a problem. There were a couple of concrete headstones that had become illegible over time, but overall, the grounds were in good shape. St. Luke’s was in even better condition. However, what I saw at White Lily was the complete opposite, and it saddened me to no end. Many of the headstones were missing or damaged and the grass was overgrown. Grave offerings were strewn about, many of them broken. There were many sinking graves, lots of them with cracks in them, and I even counted two open graves. What shocked me the most were the randomly scattered areas of slightly depressed land between certain graves which seem to hold many unmarked graves. Although this was just a small taste of the list of various cemeteries I will be visiting over the summer, this experience helped me hypothesize that African American cemeteries are in greater disrepair than White ones, and I believe that it is due to a lack of funding. Maintaining a cemetery is expensive, and many of these cemeteries are privately owned. It will be interesting to do some further research and compare other cemeteries to these findings in order to see what the final result entails.

Taking notes at the Georgiana Cemetery in Merritt Island.

            I hope you guys enjoyed my first blog entry, and I invite you to check in every Sunday to read up on my progress with this project. If you have any questions or would like to contribute with some input, feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail me at lareyne.ellebracht@knights.ucf.edu. Thanks for reading!

Until next week,
Lareyne :)