NEWBURYPORT — Almost a year after numerous unidentified graves were found in Old Hill Burying Ground, the city’s Black History Initiative will install granite markers with “Once Known” etched into them to recognize and honor their presence.
The markers will be located in the cemetery’s Black American section near Auburn Street and the city will host a special public event there next week to celebrate their installation.
“All of these folks were individual human beings who were once known in their own time, even if we don’t know their names,” Black History Initiative member Geordie Vining said. “The hope is that this makes people stop and think a little bit as they view these granite markers today, and in the future.”
The Newburyport Black History Initiative is dedicated to shedding light on city history that has been largely overlooked or forgotten.
Vining said Black residents were typically buried in one section of the 18th century cemetery near where a Black neighborhood known as “Guinea Village” once stood in the area near Auburn and Low streets (where the Henry Graff Jr. Memorial Skating Rink now stands) in the late 1700s, early 1800s.
After local historian Ghlee Woodworth noticed a particular grouping of unmarked gravestones from that era last year, the Newburyport Black History Initiative paid roughly $1,500 to have Sterling-based mapping company Geosearch Inc. use ground-penetrating radar to survey the cemetery.
A total of 18 gravesites were found in June.
“We can’t be sure if they’re all Black,” Woodworth said. “But certainly some or most are.”
Black people, Vining said, were often buried on the edge of burying grounds, not only in Newburyport but throughout New England and the Old Hill Burying Ground was no exception.
The newly discovered graves were outlined with temporary flagging last year and the Black History Initiative had 18 8-inch-by-8-inch granite markings adorned with the term “Once Known” made to permanently mark the site.
“These stones are stand-ins and they commemorate a fraction of the many people who’ve lived and died here over the centuries,” Vining said. “This is an increasingly used approach in a number of museums around the world for identifying the makers of art and other artifacts whose names basically have not been recorded by history.”
A bronze plaque acknowledging the Black American section of the cemetery was installed on Tuesday and the city will celebrate the installation and the markers with a public ceremony there Tuesday, May 21, at 3 p.m., rain or shine.
Vining, who also works as a special project manager in the city’s Planning Department, said the plaque cost $7,700 with $5,250 donated by the Newburyport Lions Club and the First Religious Society, Unitarian Universalist Church, as well as a number of individual donors.
The remaining $2,450, Vining added, comes from the city’s Community Preservation Act, which matches state funding with a local 2% property tax surcharge.
Mayor Sean Reardon, First Religious Society, Unitarian Universalist leader the Rev. Rebecca Bryan, Vining and Woodworth are expected to speak at the event, which will be held near the cemetery entrance off Auburn Street (located across the street from 22 Auburn St.)
“There has been a pattern in the past here in Newburyport and this is part of this larger attempt to properly acknowledge people and their contributions to and presence in our community,” Vining said. “So we wanted to install a plaque that explicitly identifies this area, today and in the future for visitors.”
Woodworth said she has dreamed of this installation for many years.
“I will speak a little bit about the people who will lived in that area and Rev. Rebecca will give a blessing,” she said. “Then we will all install these stones together. I’m very excited to contribute to this on behalf of these past citizens.”
The upcoming ceremony comes amid some controversy, however.
The Newburyport Black History Initiative’s “A Black Neighborhood in Historic Newburyport” interpretive sign focusing on Black Americans who lived and worked in the city from the pre-Revolutionary War era to the early 20th century was vandalized on the Clipper City Rail Trail late last week.
The sign has been in place for roughly 18 months and a rock or some other sharp object was used to scratch out the word “Black” in the title of the sign, as well as the word “Guinea” on the sign’s map describing the name of the old neighborhood.
The vandalism has become a police matter but Vining said he’s not particularly concerned about any potential copycats at the Old Hill Burying Ground.
“We can’t censor ourselves when we do any of these sorts of acknowledgments because of the fear that someone will take action against them,” he said. “We’d never fly an American flag or anything like that, if that was the worry.”
Staff writer Jim Sullivan covers Newburyport for The Daily News. He can be reached via email at jsullivan@newburyportnews.com or by phone at 978-961-3145. Follow him on Twitter @ndnsully.
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Staff writer Jim Sullivan covers Newburyport for The Daily News. He can be reached via email at jsullivan@newburyportnews.com or by phone at 978-961-3145. Follow him on Twitter @ndnsully.
