The Wake Forest Historical Museum received an Award of Excellence from the North Carolina Museums Council for its 2017 survey of the Old Cemetery of Friendship Chapel Missionary Baptist Church.
In September the museum won an Anthemion Award from Capital Area Preservation and led to a recent decision to designate the Old Cemetery a local historic site.
The cemetery dates back to the antebellum era. According to church history, it was first used by Christian slaves who gathered in secret at the wooded plot to hold nighttime worship services. After the Civil War, the 1.64 acre parcel was purchased by the congregation and became Friendship Chapel’s first cemetery. Early burials are believed to date back to the 1870s. Church members stopped using the cemetery in the 1940s or 195s after deciding it was full and beginning a new cemetery next to the 1929 brick church. In recent years members have been clearing the cemetery and restoring the markers they found.
The impetus for the survey came after Carol Paulonis, a board member with the Wake Forest Historical Association, researched the cemetery and underwrote an interactive display about it at the museum. Other board members became interested in learning more and formed a committee chaired by Dianne Laws with Paulonis, Roger Shackleford, Beverly Whisnant, Mandi Keith and Jennifer Smart, the assistant director at the museum. Laws and Shackleford are Friendship Chapel members.
The committee worked for two years, winning a grant from the Jandy Ammons Foundation and selecting New South Associates, Inc., who used ground-penetrating radar to detect nearly 600 burials, most unmarked, and one mass burial. The mass burial, according to oral church history, was necessary during the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918.
The NCMC Award of Excellence is intended to honor exhibits, publications and programs that exemplify excellence in the museum field. It was presented to the Wake Forest Historical Museum at the NCMC’s annual conference on March 18 in Greensboro. The award was accepted by Wake Forest Historical Association Treasurer Laws. The WFHA is a volunteer museum organization that works to preserve and share local history through grants, research, and free public forums.
For a fuller description of the church, the cemetery and the survey project, go to https://wakeforestmuseum.org/2017/05/23/the-story-map-of-friendship-chapel-cemetery/
