Sign West Virginia Work Order Secure

Document type sign work order west virginia secure

i'm david carmichael the director of the state archives and i want to welcome you to our next community history dialogue your community may be formed around many different types of interests but our goal is to help every social community uh discover how they can identify and preserve their history and we understand that history is much more than just archives and so today we're branching out again into another topic preserving your history through cemeteries and i'm very excited by the three speakers we have and i'm going to introduce them in the order in which they will speak starting with barbara barksdale who is known as the cemetery lady because of her dedication in caring for the historic midland cemetery in steelton pennsylvania midland cemetery is the resting place of african americans both enslaved and free members of the united states colored troops buffalo soldiers tuskegee airmen and numerous leaders from the area's african-american community barbara is the chair for the pennsylvania hallowed grounds project where she assists caretakers historians students and anyone else who is interested in caring for or restoring a cemetery she'll be followed by v chapman smith who is the project manager for eden cemeteries harker grant which is assessing the condition of the cemetery's records and record-keeping eden cemetery is a historic african-american cemetery located in collingdale pennsylvania and harc is the grant program for historical records that is administered by the state archives the project is the first step in securing the cemetery's archives and planning for digitization in her career v has led three of the largest governmental records management and archival organizations in the united states as well as one of the largest corporate programs in the us and has worked extensively on numerous heritage projects including the return of national history day to philadelphia in 2003 after a 25-year hiatus and of course her current work with eden cemetery and v will be followed by samantha dorm who is a member of the friends of lebanon cemetery a volunteer group that organized in 2019 to uncover the rich history of york county's african-american burial grounds by locating identifying and documenting the people interred in these cemeteries thereby preserving not just their grave locations but their stories as well so welcome to all of you we are looking forward to hearing what you have to tell us about historic cemeteries thank you and then turn it over to barbara oh there joshua tyler okay thank you i was trying to make sure i could get that thing sorry i'm just i'm still in the meeting trying to run it um what was i gonna say oh you're saying about the webinar this this isn't a webinar meeting this is a meeting meeting okay you did hear you're on uh you're on the phone so barbara why don't you go ahead and um you can just go ahead with your presentation right now okay all right well good afternoon everyone um as he had mentioned my name is uh barbara barksdale and i am the chairperson for the pennsylvania hollow grounds project i am also the founder and president of the friends of midland um taking care of the historic midland cemetery that's located uh right outside the border so still but inside our township and i just want to before i go further i want to make sure i say thank you to uh josh and tyler and david and everyone else who invited us to be a part of this history community history dialogue it is so important to be able to share information and get this information out there with everyone about what we're doing how we're doing and um you know how we can come together as a united team for this so let me just tell you about um pa holograms first of all as you see on the screen our mission is to conserve interpret and honor the burial sites of the pennsylvania united states colored troops the usct as we refer to them and the cemeteries in which they are interred with that being said is that our um our group is looking for any cemetery any cemetery that holds the remains of the united states color troops uh as you know for most of you that are on this here um zoom meeting is that the united states star color troops were part of the guys that and girls that fought in the civil war and unfortunately they were not able to start off at the very beginning because they were prohibited from being a part of that but um they sooner or later got into it and they played a huge role in the civil war especially in fighting for our freedom as you see with this here um did i miss it no uh with the um the ads here we are not the ad but the picture here is that these men not only was fighting for their freedom but also for the freedoms of their families and friends and whomever that they may have had um of course i'm gonna mess with this uh computer system here but um was just fighting for not only them their cells but also for everybody that came behind them like us are there and their descendants in order for those men to go into the war um we also had those people who were we call recruiters to try to pull them together and recruitment ads like the one that you're seeing on the screen right now to try to get these men to enlist and encourage them to leave their homes if they're with settled in or to you know their jobs that they may have had at that time and come out and fight in this civil war which was obviously a huge thing for the united states at that time because we were not completely at that point of being a united states families um that they left behind maybe living here in stilton maybe or in pennsylvania that they found themselves coming into an area where they had to find work right after the civil war was over so these men uh having their families here created their roots right here and finding not only their jobs but their loved ones their people that they just wanted to have an association with as they say birds of a feather flocks together so somebody that they felt comfortable with is what they was looking for i'm pretty sure that as we are today that we all try to find a place where we feel comfortable and feel like we are being welcomed in so these here men and some women who were part of the civil war and i say women only because those who were maybe supporting these hair men as they were going out that they were buried in many of the cemeteries around pennsylvania and around the united states so unfortunately many of these cemeteries that were um holding these bodies actually became abandoned condemned and actually forgotten over the years many of them's just like the historic midland cemetery this here is a a picture of midland cemetery when i first got started cleaning up the cemetery many people right there in their own little area of around the cemetery didn't even know that it was there neighbors didn't even know how large this cemetery was until we started cleaning it up not only was the cemetery abandoned but it was also infringed upon by widening of the alleyway that is on the side of it and redirecting the road over the oldest part of the cemetery this is the type of neglect that the pennsylvania hollow grounds is trying to prevent and what we're trying to do is make sure that in this fair prevention that we also add to the archives that we may have in our association or in the archives that we have at the local level or even at the state level keep in mind that every single headstone that you find in a place like midland or in lebanon or wherever that these cemeteries are located at every single stone that we uncover is another piece of that forgotten history the cemetery itself is the archives for me for other people that are trying to locate their family and also their community where the uh one of the most important parts of the piston the pennsylvania hollow grounds is to clo locate all of the cemeteries that holds the remains of the usdt and in doing so we have also um finding those people that have been forgotten that resided in the community some of the communities like little washington that was over there in marysville across the the river from the um from harrisburg was totally wiped out it was a community of african americans that came up from the civil war some of them that lived here in the area and now you cannot find a single african-american um at least not even 10 years ago living there and that whole community was wiped out but where is the cemetery we're trying to find that cemetery uh think about it if you were standing in a spot 100 years ago where is that what's looking what are you looking at now you're not seeing that same uh environment and unfortunately when you go back in time trees and weeds and everything else is grown over or the street is now over those cemeteries um the buildings are now over those cemeteries and unfortunately you're shocked because those cemeteries are now long gone unfortunately those people are up under all those things that i just mentioned so the transformation of the area the town the city is now totally changed from what was 100 years ago 200 years ago so therefore what we're trying to do with the pennsylvania hollow grounds is to make sure that we are reaching out to the communities to the counties to help find locate the remains of the usct if you locate the remains of the usct you're also going to locate the families the churches the civic leaders the schools and those who worked in the area you're gonna find a whole new addition to what you already know as far as um just a name a person who was a usct you're going to find so much more and then some of these relatives can come out of hiding and maybe find out the fact that their fathers or grandfathers great grandfathers were part of the united states cultures maybe they'll find that little washington town that is no longer there maybe they'll find that property that is um totally obscured by so many other things that nobody knows where their ancestors may be buried at this here slide here is one of those little things that when brenda barrett and um a couple of us was running around pennsylvania here trying to find cemeteries some years ago we came across this one here located in royalton pennsylvania which again is not far from harrisburg and you see these three little boys here they live next door and they saw us outside looking around and they were like being curious as they are the kids they came outside to say you know what are you doing what are you looking for and we told them we're looking for a little cemetery don't you know those children came right out their yard and ran right on over there and next thing you know there they are pulling up the grass and showing us the headstone this had been their playground and it still continues to be their playground because those headstones are under the grass and their family is taking care of that uh play area because that's where the kids can play and we did not disturb any of the headstones because um we did not want to put them up where they could be destroyed and messed up any further than what they would be we also found as we were traveling around um that we found a federal mailbox on top of part of a cemetery and so where those bodies move at this point we have to say no those bodies are still there unfortunately that is again a piece of our archive history that is laying under a mailbox just like you heard about up in new york you found out that or you may have heard that there was um a federal building on top of a cemetery there do we ever get the names no if we can get the names off the headstones then we could add this information to the archives because many times there was nothing especially for african americans that would denote who we were at that time back in the 1800s 1700s or whatever maybe again there is somebody who is trying to find a relative so that they can have a focal point or starting point in their lives as a um uh as a descendant all right so um moving forward our thing is um in order to to document and to add to the archives we're asking you to support the pennsylvania hollow grounds to share with us the names and groups of the cemetery stewards to add to our current list of cemeteries we are looking for um organizations that we can partner with including genealogy associations and groups such as the sons of the union veterans uh we are reaching out to the boroughs the townships and cities to ask them to create a committee in their area especially if they can connect themselves to the county um office of veterans affairs that they may have the records of those military headstones that they process for the local cemeteries because that is another way of pulling this archive information together on your cemetery they would know uh especially at the county level who they actually you know for let's say the uh the dd 214 uh whoever had was a veteran would have had that information there at the county level if the person died within their county and they gave them a headstone then that information should be at the county veterans affairs or county veterans office and they should be able hopefully to share that information with you to say who received the headstone at this particular cemetery and they're located within their county so we're also trying to um get people to help us to get that information also and disseminate it and send it to us so that we can add it to um you know the body of information that we have with dr stevenberg so we're also looking at connecting with the state game commission concerning the state land that may have been um forgotten along the lines that um now again you have the weeds and the trees and you have the forest animals and everything else there who are um you know the cemeteries are lost if you go to pinchot park over again not far from this um city of harrisburg you're going to find a a small cemetery right along the roadside there that is uh now maintained but at one time there were some students from the local school over there that actually went in and cleaned it up and it's a ongoing process if nobody's going to clean it up it's going to get hidden again and so this is on state land so what do we do to get the state to also maintain and take care of these cemeteries that it's on their property we need to make sure that we are connecting with people and doing what we need to do to not forget our our folks [Music] so the pennsylvania hollow grounds again we are looking at every single cemetery and i can't say it enough of where a united states cemetery united states colored troop person would be buried at the cemetery could be one that is uh county owned like the potter's field it could be privately owned because of the land that it is on uh like over dillsburg we have the lincoln cemetery and it is on a personal person's land it is their land so they can say yay or nay if you're going to be able to come on to it it could be a section of a white semi uh white cemetery uh sometimes like um at the pacstay cemetery they have a section in the back that is for what they have their slaves and it says slaves for life on their headstones you know um it could be one that is associated with the church especially uh the churches like the the ame church uh many of them because they started back in the 1800s they have their own cemetery right outside the doors of the church or not too far from the church it could be that it was a group or somebody that was a personal owner of a cemetery you know because they saw the need for a cemetery when they they didn't have enough land so they stopped selling so therefore there was no more profits and they all died off themselves and so therefore you have this abandoned cemetery so what do we need to do to make sure that these cemeteries all of them are taken care of so we need the pennsylvania holograms need you to give us the information the location name of the cemetery and any other pertinent information that we can pull together and make sure that these places are not forgotten we need the name of the stores we need the caretakers uh the churches that may be associated with the cemetery and anyone who oversees the cemetery does the cemetery need to be adopted restored and what do we need to make sure that those people those bodies in the hollow grounds are taken ca e of you know we have lots of wonderful ancestors out there who have been forgotten we don't know who they are where they're at and so we really need to push forward to uh seek them out now this particular uh slide i think is a noteworthy here because it talks about a gentleman by the name of jeremiah jackson within that obituary it gives a little a little bit of history about jeremiah just a glimpse a snapshot into his life and it says he was one of the first to enter richmond after and of course after the confederate government surrendered okay and and this is something that would nobody would know about jeremiah jackson because of the fact that he's long gone he he actually is buried at midland cemetery we found um the site that he may be buried in but we don't have a headstone for jeremiah jackson so without doing the research and digging into old obituaries and um looking up just uh obituaries of midland cemetery this one may have never come to light so now we know jeremiah jackson who was a gallant member of the colors troops during the rebellion and one of the first to enter richmond after a surrender went to the soldiers home at erie and we know that the soldiers home is it's there but it's not there you know they have changed hands over the years and so it's no longer truly just the military um hospital but we don't want to forgive people such as jeremiah jackson so we're looking for those wonderful stories that will talk about the jeremiah jacksons of the world and this would also include any families that jeremiah might have been a part of or his friendships because i found his records unfortunately he did not have any living relatives at the time of his death but a friend had to take over his burial needs and get it taken care of so maybe their friend didn't know he could apply to the county at the time and get jeremiah a a proper headstone we're looking for not only the usct but then it leads you to the buffalo soldiers it leads you to those who were part of the community around us here jeremiah jackson did he work at the mill you know what did he do it also pulls us back into why jeremiah was out there fighting and that was again for the freedom you know was this part was he part of the um association of those who were part of the underground railroad network you know the abolitionists the community churches at the time what did he actually do and what did so many others have to do with you know this here freedom so this here these cemeteries hold those stories it holds those remains and those remains needs to be um taken care of so we're looking for the jeremiah jacksons of the world you know those who worked in the mills and the quarries became domestic workers the teachers as everyone everyone everyone has a story so what do we do to keep those stories going uh and making sure that we can share their life stories with the world maybe they weren't important to you but they're important to somebody along the line and this year particular cemetery um as you see there's a state marker there at the 54th massachusetts is being honored and like in at midland we had the 55th massachusetts so these here uh wonderful people are out there talking about the history so if you um have an interest in history which that's why you're on this your call with us you're going to hopefully be the one that is going to help volunteer in your area to do something to maintain restore archive any kind of information that has to deal with the cemetery uh one of the things i wanted to bring to your attention also is the educational component of all this and that means that you know using the cemetery as a way to teach in this way if we can teach them about the um teach anybody about the cemeteries especially the young people maybe that will decrease the the possibility of that cemetery being vandalized or forgotten if i may uh just jumping in with a two minute warning okay thank you and i got two minutes to go okay good so uh using this time um the educational part of all this is just to make sure that we are including our youth groups our schools uh like at midland what i do is i use the um the cemetery as a teaching tool so i bring the students from the school over to the cemetery and what they do is um we have the history teacher there of course we have the math teacher because we're using the headstones for math because the date of birth to the date of death we're also using a science teacher there because we need to make sure that the children understands what the ground is made of what the headstones are made of are they marble are they slate are they you know uh soapstone what what is it what's the components of all this and it's not just a headstone it's not just a cemetery it's not a bunch of dead people it is also a place where there's science we also utilize the art teacher and the writing teachers because there is art within cemeteries as you know and it's also a way that the children can pull their thoughts together put it in writing and then share it with us about their experience at the cemetery we also uh increased tourism you know not only at midland but at other cemeteries around the state like eden cemetery uh to pull people in so that they can come and take a look looking for the relatives and also see the beauty of those cemeteries and then we have um cemeteries all over the area that uh we are using what the pennsylvania grounds is using the cemeteries to um the information to create mapping information to give updates on uh available grants to share the stories of with other caretakers and other stores and groups and stuff like that we're also trying to get people to make sure that they have um acknowledgement of those who are enslaved and those who are freedom seekers to get those stories documented and get that information out there and also make sure that we are not um leaving any stone unturned and let me just like slide through this there's another cemetery that um you know we were part of trying to make sure that we're getting this is the lincoln cemetery that i had referred to earlier and this is where we're trying to have conversations people we're trying to have conversation with historians preservationists uh landscape architects anthropologists archaeologists we're trying to pull all these people together to make sure that we are including anybody who may have a role in taking care of cemeteries or finding the cemetery and how to document them what are we going to do we need to make sure that the national park service is involved in this we're working with them on different levels with the um the underground uh railroad network we're working with them on uh other projects around the state and also at the um federal level and we're also just really trying to pull together not only the stories but also the artifacts that goes along with it and last but not least we don't want to not forget that um we are part of the supporters of the african-american burial ground study act and we're going to try begin with this new congress to make sure that we have that bill passed to protect and take care of the cemeteries so with that being said i could tell you so much more but i'm gonna let v take over and uh share what she has been doing with um eden cemetery okay all right v is your turn okay thank you very much um first of all um i want to thank you barbara for all the great work that you're doing to uncover these cemeteries uh you know our society has a habit of building over each other uh and it's not just here in america it's in europe as well and there's only so much earth in the on land on the earth and people just keep building on top so you are really helping to have us dig deep and understand what's beneath us as well as helping to honor the ancestors who gave so much to fight in the civil war uh and from the african-american community so i just want to thank you for that because i think that's great um i also want to thank david carmichael and his team for inviting me to present our heart project uh for eden and i do disagree with my uh david a little bit because i do think archives are everything because without archives we really don't have a permanent record of what has taken place in the past and so we can either have an archive that's a part of a business organization like eden or we are creating archive from the research work that is coming out of what barbara is doing and so we always need to think about what do we do with the evidence where are we going to be putting it how where is it going to be preserved so you don't have to do it over again so i do believe archives is everything david i just want to let you know so what is the purpose of the heart grant that eden has gotten and why was it sought well eden cemetery which as david said is one of the oldest continuously operating cemeteries in the country is at a very critical juncture regarding the condition of its records um we are just completing uh an uh an assessment that was done by the conservation center and looking at that assessment we are seeing that 85 of the older records are in need of some kind of conservation care and this is care that is needed before we can even begin a digitization project a lot of people think oh i can just put it in a scanner and i can get it digitized but you got to think about the condition of the records and whether you're going to damage them further through that process and you also have to think about the condition of the records in terms of people handling those records so eden is at a particularly challenging point with there it is also because it is a continuously operating cemetery uh they use their older records virtually every day the cemetery buries about 200 people a year and i will say i am expecting that the stats this year are going to be higher because of the uh impact of covet on the african-american community and when um my husband who's sitting behind me who's working on the project with me has been checking in to pull data together about what is happening with burials at eden they said they have never been so busy and you would think that some of the burials may only relate to people in recent times but actually eden is actually burying people uh who were born in the early part of the 20th century like um oh um thus kiki airmen we've seen some burials recently for tuskegee airmen so the burial ground is important we are finding that there's increased public research traffic to use the older records which means people want to handle them they want to touch them they want to use them in some way so what the heart project the bottom line is that is providing a framework for the next steps that eden needs to undertake to actually begin a digitization project it is not the digitization project and some people have uh tended to confuse that i will also say it is not including the kinds of special collections records which are not archive archive are the business records special collection records that are being gathered by eaton volunteers related to research that they're doing on people who have been buried in the cemetery particularly trying to identify those from the older cemeteries that were moved to eden where there were no burial books provided so we're doing some of the similar work that barber has done uh on the midland cemetery at eden and creating lists of people and their stories those are special collections and that those records have to be addressed uh we're not addressing those as part of a digitization project but we are looking at it in terms of eden's records management because the records those records are also important to eden especially when they move forward with their historical uh projects doing tours and programming like barb is doing at midlands but it's not those records that are needed for the daily operation of the cemetery eden itself was founded six years after plessy versus ferguson in 1996 and it was a result of jim crow laws prohibiting african americans to be buried and by cemeteries and all kinds of other general things that happen in our region and in the in the city however the cemetery burials date back to 1715 and that is because eden was established as a collecting cemetery and that meant that older black cemeteries in philadelphia when they were condemned or abandoned doing dealing with some of the issues that barbara had mentioned with midland they would even arrange to have those bodies moved to eden and so their sections of the cemetery that are named for those earlier cemeteries and those bodies are there and the condition under which those bodies were buried at eden uh were such that like i said they don't always have the burial books and secondly people were placed in mass graves and so we don't have headstones for those people so this those are not part of the project that's a whole separate project although we do have people volunteers eden has people who are volunteers who are trying to compile information about those individuals and that those records will have to be dealt with in some way but we're primarily focused in on the books the older burial books the cemetery logs the order books related to the cemetery the cemetery itself is also significant because it is the embodiment embodiment of the african-american community in philadelphia many of you are familiar i'm sure with the history of the black community in philadelphia and it was uh the oldest and one of the oldest and largest free black communities in the country it was definitely the largest free black community in the north and when you go to eden you will see the stories of people uh like james forten and william still they're all there can be breathtaking just to walk through so that cemetery has the history of philadelphia's black community going from 1750 actually up to the present it also includes individuals who were of national importance who are connected to that philadelphia community who had families and they brought them because they wanted to be buried with their families or were placed at edu cemetery so um it is a significant place um it's been my great honor to help uh even do some historical interpretation around that and i believe it's because of that that we have been able to make the case that a records preservation project was necessary so what is the heart grant doing um the main thing to keep in mind is that this is not only a project that's looking at the records uh in terms of historical value it is also looking at the cemetery's current use of those records for its business maybe at some point when the cemetery is completely filled it will be totally a historical artifact but right now it is an operating business and it is important to help identify what those business needs are and because it really impacts the way we can approach digitization preservation and the research value for the public to use those records i like to tell people that our heart grant is helping us to look at the life cycle of records that's a records management term which means from creation to archiving or archiving meaning death of a record because that's how eden is using it they create these records uh sometimes the records are organized in ways that they really have to be able to support a family who have members uh who purchased the cemetery lot at the founding of eden and they still have burial plots available for recent members to be buried in so the older records become evidence of their ownership of that plot and then also how and where they these individuals the current individuals can be placed in that plot so the records aren't really dead records they are living records and we have to approach it as a life cycle activity so our project we brought in the conservation center for art and historic artifacts to look at these records uh for us especially the older historical records and they did a full assessment of 83 bound volumes and they did a streamline assessment of 62 of the more current volumes i will tell you that we decided because of the limited amount of funding available that we couldn't have every single record uh older record and modern record looked at uh because it was just going to cost too much but we believe that our survey strategy is providing us with enough information that w have a pretty strong picture of the condition of the entire collection of the records and we will be able to advance applications to other sources to raise money i do want to encourage the pennsylvania state archives to try to find a way to grow their grant pool uh yes we definitely appreciated the ten thousand dollars given for this project but believe me we could have used three times as much to look at all of it most of the work on this project is uh being done by volunteers so the biggest expense that we've had is paying for the professional services from the conservation center and the rest of the people including myself are volunteers and uh the value of our services far outstrip the money amount that was given by the state but it was important for us uh to do that to be able to build a team an interdisciplinary team that was willing to bring volunteer resources to this to enable eden to get the cash the money needed to do the assessment eden's desire is to eventually move to some kind of digital platform for managing its archives and the project itself is looking at how can this be done what is needed to build the underlying indices what kind of platform is going to be appropriate that supports the business and also supports historical research by people who come on site and people who are across the country how do you make that happen and what are the capacities within eden itself to even manage a digital platform so i mentioned my husband in the background he's helping us with the technology piece of this he's had uh his entire career looking at these kinds of issues so his piece of the project working with some of the volunteers is actually mapping the information on the records and how it's used by the business people and the researchers because you got to understand how the two worlds end up intersecting and how you can do that and the bottom line is um for us the big question what is the solution within eden's capabilities to manage this internally and will other supports be needed so that's the big question we're still trying to answer eden is uh even though it's an older organization it's sort of small um it has a very small staff it has very limited technology capabilities it has no one on staff who's an archivist or a records manager it's where you would you know you would see opportunities for eden to have partnerships with institutions like historical societies libraries but also there's a place in this in its future where um archivists could be supportive either as paid staff or as volunteers because the volunteers that they do get into eden to help with some of the historical stuff have no experience with records handling and one of the things when i was uh first asked to look at the project is that look at doing a project uh because of my extensive experience uh managing archives and records programs i could easily see that those records were overhandled they were crumbling um some of the books were falling apart there's mold there's all kinds of conditions that you just can't jump into a project and say i'm going to digitize it there's different conditions with the records in terms of the inks being used what are you going to do with this so there's a lot of critical issues that need to be addressed including uh thinking about whether you're even going to after you do what you need to do to get it digitized are you going to really want to up front having invested in preserving all of those records are some of them valuable enough for exhibition purposes and others can just be retired so if i may jump in uh two minute warning okay no problem so anyway we have people working uh on this project to figure out what needs to be done how it's going to be done it it may sound complicated it's not necessarily complicated but it is going to be pricey uh we know from some of the preliminary work we've done so far it's going to be hundreds of thousands of dollars to actually take on a digital project uh once we get the conservation work done the the dollar amount is not even including the software platform that would be used uh it's not including sustainability and ongoing needs but the project is helping to justify the investment and we are working to do that by looking at how significant this collection is nationally so with that i would ask who's doing the movie the video josh or tyler to show you a quick video uh v v we're running a little short on time would it be all right if we we post the link in the chat and maybe if we have time at the end after uh the conversation okay well that will be fine i would recommend that you look at the video because one of the things that we did um we were able to get ancestry to uh produce a video about eden and its historical significance and we were able to get uh henry lewis gates talk about eden and why it's an important place so while we're working on this project we're thinking of ways that we can build um more of a public profile so people understand the historical significance of a place like eden cemetery and so um i'm done and i don't see you're going to pass samantha there you are i was looking for you here thank you and if we have the presentation okay give me one sec i'm gonna share my screen so that everyone can see the slides thank you and as you're doing that um okay can everybody see this okay yes yes great and do i now have control or are you going to move it for me just let me know when you want to move the slides no problem you can go to the next side please and i'm going to move through this fairly quickly because it looks like there are several questions and i want to make sure that we're able to reach out to the audience and a lot of our information is available online so first of all thank you for inviting me today on behalf of the friends of lebanon cemetery we're kind of the new kids on the blog with pa hallow grounds and so very thankful for barbara and v and others in the network that are so willing to share information with our group so first being able to understand why a black cemetery needed to be created in the first place that even in death there was segregation there was a york gazette article uh that appeared probably around 1950 uh or into the early 60s that mentioned that only those of the caucasian race could be buried in their cemetery and this was a survey that was done throughout york county within that same article there is a mention of deeds of lot owners and a charter for the cemetery so those keywords deeds and charter next slide please lebanon cemetery located in north york here in york pennsylvania was established in 1872 and is still an active cemetery there are some markers from with earlier death dates indicating that there was a removal from other sites uh in september of 1874 the york gazette newspaper article tells of moving four bodies from the potter's field uh here in york to our lebanon cemetery and then we also have some records through the history center that talks about the number of markers that were visible in 1935 and many of those markers of course back then were wooden and would not be in existence today the first documented internment to lebanon cemetery was louis thomas age 86 who died on november 29 1872 and that information appeared in new york daily record on december 3rd of that year next slide so if lebanon cemetery had started with nearly two acres of land that were purchased by the chartered managers at a rate of five hundred dollars per acre again i key in on those words chartered managers why because when our group started we were trying to figure out who owned the cemetery where could we find the documents that talked about that in trying to understand the difference between an oral story versus a legal document and needing to work with the archives to find those types of documents who owns the cemetery chartered managers in this time next slide please so we were looking at that point to try and figure out uh where is the charter and what does it say and so as we had some volunteer members that were embarking on finding those documents next slide please we put out a plea for volunteers to come and help us with the physical restoration of the cemetery so uncovering the markers represents just one aspect of what we do at lebanon cemetery about once a month we would come out in groups in the spring and summer yes even when it was 103 degrees we had volunteers out in the cemetery which was amazing we work in teams to trim high grass if needed we are uncovering markers we're documenting the conditions of those markers in the area of the cemetery we are confirming the location of veterans and also researching family connections next slide there's a quote here from margaret mead that you know we always kind of tie back to that simply says never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world indeed it is the only thing that ever has and so we work with that and we focus on that that whether we have two or three volunteers out or we have a team of 50 we get work done to preserve our history next slide going through moments of discovery some of the pictures that are located here where what looks to be simply a mound of dirt ended up being an area where we found five markers that had sunken beneath the surface after uh locating those markers resetting them cleaning them as best we could then our team will work on finding out the information about those individuals looking for death certificates looking for their obituaries and oftentimes moving on to even more stories about those individuals next slide here again with our moments of discovery you can see in some of the pictures just you know pulling up the side and having names imprinted there and and the power of that looking at some of the damage and groundhog holes where entire headstones have sunken beneath uh the ground and we were able to get those reset using all volunteers next slide in this picture again with our moments of discovery uh the picture that sits the highest and was a flat marker at least six inches from the surface maybe a little bit deeper and it turned out to be that of a reverend richard alexander carroll with the ame church and so we were able to then look into the story in the life of reverend carroll next slide i did put into the chat uh where we are putting some of this information to make sure it is free and it is searchable uh for for families for historians um to be able to connect so certainly with find a grade which is connected through ancestry but also billiongraves.com uh one of the nice features with billion grapes is it is gps enabled so if you're at the cemetery it would walk you directly to the site of that picture so if we do lose some of those flat markers again if they sink beneath the surface we'll have that gps coordinate of that last known location for that next slide so just with talking about some of the stories and the information we pull we do make this information available to families uh for free in trying to get our veterans honored and we have many veterans that do not have any type of marker or military stones so one of our volunteers a lady by the name of jenny dejesus marshall has really been our advocate for our veterans and she will pull their burial card grab the obituary put in the picture and we have individual files then available for families if they need them of the veterans but i put here you know what do we where do we want to take the stories because we do try to tell information about the people's lives who they were what they did and in this case looking at the obituary we know uh that this gentleman was born uh someplace else which is west virginia so why did he come to york what brought him here are there other family members located in lebanon cemetery about his military service what did his unit do as well as where did he work so we pull all of those stories sometimes just starting simply with a headstone or marker and two dates birth and death next slide i'm going to talk just real briefly about documenting a family you can come to the next slide here you'll see a picture of work that was being done to preserve a stone to clean the stone itself and you see here it says reverend j s kohl's which is jesse s coles with the ame church next slide so with reverend kohl's we were actually working backwards with him uh we had documented information about the two young ladies that he and his wife had uh adopted when they were very young so adoption records very important um any type of birth certificates anything that's leading back to their biological families where were they adopted trying to access that information and not knowing what we were going to trip over and looking at reverend cole so the abbreviated story is that he escaped from slavery at the age of 14 from virginia and made his way to connecticut and by the age of 15 he was fighting in the civil war uh and and actually did see combat while we were looking at this information we found out that the university of virginia has been doing presentations and also looking at reverend kohl's and we've been able to now share information and documents with the university as well as what we had because one of the key things that one of those kind of wow moments that we had we came across information where in 1871 reverend kohl's was looking for his family he was looking for his mother and his siblings and that document that information from that newspaper is actually located in the library of congress and so 1871 he's looking for his family in our files here in york pennsylvania in 1897 when he died his will said to box up his clothing and send it to two of those brothers that he was looking for in 1871 so clearly at some point he was able to locate some of his family so now you know the hunch is on to find out when did that happen where did that happen are there other family members next slide please i put this up with james smallwood you do see the historical marker here which is at the location of where the school building was that he was able to start which was the first school for african american children in york pennsylvania he is buried at our cemetery in lebanon cemetery in north york however a good bit of his family came over from philadelphia so all across going from uh york certainly into columbia i saw some folks joined us today from columbia lancaster chester philadelphia we're tracking that migration and many of us have the same families and it's so important for us to be able to share that information next slide collaborations not just with this group but also with the media as well as our historical society getting information out there i know v mentioned about you know what's currently taking place and what's happening um how is covet impacting current burials but i actually went back to look at what happened during the spanish flu what was the impact on the black community from the spanish flu and a local gentleman by the name of jim mcclure wrote an article using that data next slide so quickly chemist caterer musician marine clergy educator next slide artists civil war soldier laborer former slave next slide athletic trainer business owner physician baseball players police officers access to information is what helps us to tell their stories next slide so on behalf of the friends of lebanon cemetery here in york pennsylvania i just wanted to uh thank everyone for this opportunity to to share the information and for uh working with us as we continue to grow uh in our endeavors here in preserving sharing and telling the stories of york's black history thank you thank you that was