Mapping an African American Cemetery

Wyseola Smith and Sarah Grady

Chew's Chapel in Edgewater, Maryland, is your typical Mid-Atlantic African American cemetery.  Found on a hillside that overlooks what used to be a stream, it is full of marked and unmarked graves.

On November 14 we learned about using cemetery mapping as a preservation strategy for working with and for communities.

First Sarah Grady related how her project documenting an African American school led to her interaction with the local community and a subsequent request to investigate the cemetery at Chew's Chapel.  Volunteers at the Smithsonian Environmental Archaeology Laboratory mapped the cemetery and produced a product for the descendants of those interred at the cemetery.  Sarah indicated that the next step is to work with the community to determine how they want to use and to maintain this information.

Next Wyseola Smith talked about her ties to the school, the church, and this African American community and what it meant to her to grow up in such a community.

Both Sarah and Wyseola volunteer in the Archaeology Lab at the  Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.  Sarah is a former president of CCASM.

Attendance: 14