Historical board to receive Anthemion award

On Monday, Sept. 25, the Wake Forest Historical Association will receive a coveted Anthemion Award from Capital Area Preservation during a reception at the Irregardless Café in Raleigh for its work in preserving and mapping – using ground-penetrating radar – the 19^th century cemetery belonging to Friendship Chapel Missionary Baptist Church.

Dianne Laws and Roger Shackleford, who led the committee which worked on the project, will accept the award. Both are members of the historical association’s board and Friendship Chapel.

The idea for the project was inspired by board member Carol Paulonis, who researched the cemetery, photographed it and provided an interactive exhibit at the Wake Forest Historical Museum on North Main Street. She was a committee member along with board members Beverly Whisnant and Mandi Keith and Jennifer Smart, the assistant director at the museum.

The ground-penetrating survey was conducted by archeologist Sarah Lowry and historian Ellen Turco, both on staff at New South Associates Inc. The work was made possible by a $9,000 grant from the Jandy Ammons Foundation, and several members of Friendship Chapel provided information and support.

The cemetery lies near the part of the former Holding dairy farm that is being developed as Holding Village, and one of the committee’s aims is to protect the cemetery and have it recognized. Future work includes a fence around the cemetery with a natural buffer and a sign. There are also plans to pursue local landmark status.

The archeologists and historians from New South Associates, which specializes in research and documentation of historic sites, surveyed five sections of the cemetery, which is under 2 acres in size, and found evidence of 567 burials and a single mass grave. The church history is that during the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918 so many people died so quickly that it was impossible for the survivors to dig individual graves. The radar could not be used on ground that was too steep or blocked, leading the researchers to extrapolate from the discovered graves and project that the cemetery holds 600-plus burials.

The description of the project on the museum’s website says: “The “Old Cemetery” dates to the period before the Civil War and originally served as a nighttime gathering place for Christian slaves who met to worship in secret. After Emancipation, freed slaves from around Forestville worked alongside leaders of Forestville Baptist Church to form their own congregation. This became Friendship Chapel, named for the cooperation surrounding the joint effort. It was the devout spirituality of Nelson Ligon, a former slave who attended services in the balcony of Forestville Baptist, that led to the establishment of the new congregation. To this day he’s revered as its founding member.

“By the 1880s, members of Friendship Chapel had constructed a church building and dedicated their original meeting place as a cemetery. It was used for burials for approximately seventy years, ending in the late 1940s or early 1950s when it was deemed full and a new cemetery was started behind the church.

“In the latter part of the twentieth century the older, wooded site fell into disuse. But it was never forgotten. The congregation of Friendship Chapel has continued to guard the property. Members are well aware of its presence, its general boundaries are known, and descendants still recall the familiar names on the limited number of stone or concrete tombstones that have survived the years.

“This cemetery is many things to the community: sacred ground, green space, and archaeological site. It is the final resting place for generations of African-American residents of Wake Forest, Forestville, and the surrounding area–including those who made the journey from slavery to freedom.”