Danville, Virginia – A decision to transport the remains of hundreds of African tenant’s American tenants from a farm in Virginia former tobacco to a burial land devoted a set of feelings among the grandchildren of the participants.
Some are concerned about the effects of disturbing the graves of people who have been exploited and enslaved. Others hope to get to know the remains and re -bury them with more respect than it had been provided in life.
Unlimited residues are often transferred from a location that was part of one of the largest slave ownership of the country, to make room for an industrial park.
When they were buried, they were not considered a human being completely, but now “patriots come out of their graves with equal rights in 2025,” one of the descendants said, CEDRIC HAIRSTON.
Archaeologists have already started extracting approximately 275 pieces, and some of the remnants of the tenants and their families are already in a funeral home but will be transferred to the new burial site about a mile. Officials were marking the descendants of genetic tests on unidentified residues as well as designs for the new cemetery, including the memorial corridor.
“I don’t think anyone wants to extract their ancestors or move,” said Jeff Bennett, who buried his great grandfather on the farm. “But in order to give us a lot of saying in the new cemetery, all the way to the details of the design, the souvenirs and the memorial that we offer, I feel (they) do this in a decent way, in a respectful way.”
American cemeteries have suffered from negligence, abandonment and destruction over the centuries. but The efforts made to preserve them They acquire momentum, With detection societiesAnd rebuilding These decisive links for past generations.
Despite his general support for the project to move the graves, Hairston worries an insult to extract the graves of people who were brutal as slaves and took advantage of them as subscribers.
“It seems that 100 years or so is strange after their death, there is still comfort,” he said.
Oak Hill was part of a family empire that enslaved thousands of people across 45 farms and farms in four states, according to “The HairsTons”, a book written by Henry and Tik in 1999 that recounts the families of black and white hair.
Wilston Samuel Hreston, the owner of the farm, wrote the largest enslavement in the south.
But the major properties have been mostly empty and unused since the end of participation in the last century. The 1820s farm house was destroyed in 1988.
Many of those who enslaved in Oak Hill wrote after emancipation. Those who, as tenant farmers, were often exposed to wages and faced overwhelming poverty and sometimes violence in Jim Crow South.
Some rented farmers took the title of Hairston, partly due to “we had no other name to get to know it, as the government was collecting data for the census. Cedric Hriston said:” We did not bring any name of the latter with us from Africa, adding: “Many of our women carried us and a child born, and the law has never been supported to report that they were raped.”
One of the participants was Fleming Adams, the father, the great great Bennett. Bennett said he is known as “Film”, he was born in slavery on another farm in 1830.
Adams and his wife Martha raised three children – George, Daniel and Felim Junior – before his death in 1916.
“I hope we can discover a film place,” Bennett said. It was 7 feet length, so they were looking for a greater coffin. We hope that there will be enough for his remains as they can do a sample of DNA. “
Most of the cemeteries are marked in the isolated Sharpper cemeteries only through algae -covered stones without inscriptions. Rows of declines on the ground showed that the wooden coffins collapsed below. The needles of insulating pine trees covered many conspiracies.
A public entity, the Bitzelvanian Industrial Facility Authority, obtained an area of 3,500 acres (1400 hectares) of lands that included the former Oak Hill farm, and the accurate advertisement in Tennessee in November, will build a $ 1.3 billion battery production facility there. You expect to create 2000 jobs.
Virginia’s historical resources management gave a permit in late November to move graves, noting that transportation is compatible with the desires of the beekeeper. Bennett and others visited the sites in December.
Silence fell walking in the first cemetery. GD Adams, a descendant of Oak Hill, said a historical mark should be placed there.
“We need some time in order to determine what we want and how we want,” said Adams, Lamo Row, Director of Economic Development in Pittsfania Province.
Row answered, “I am open to anything and everything.”
The Industrial Authority raised $ 1.3 million in land registration to finance the project, which is being addressed by the engineering and consulting company WSP.
John Bidel, the archaeologist at WSP, said that everything will be collected from every grave spear, even if it is often soil, and it was transferred to its new area, including the stone that represents it.
The company hopes to finish transferring graves by early March. The work will be followed on the new burial site and the dedication party in the coming months.
Bennett and others have watched the personal elements in the graves. Protected in plastic bags, glasses, a 5 -cents medicine and coin bottle of 1836. One man was buried with an electric lamp, socket and electric cord. Bennett said that the grave of another man lined up with bricks, indicating that he was rich.
He said that these bricks will be reused on the new burial site, perhaps in the memorial corridor, and decreases with the names of the deceased.
The descendants of the home funeral records are reviewed to try to determine those buried in unique graves. Looking at the difficult nature of the mission, they may record the names of everyone who lived in the region.
“I feel that we reaffirm the importance of our ancestors,” Bennett said. The generations have been since people used this field to bury people. And now we discover their stories. We hope that we can continue telling these stories for future generations. ”