Burials outside of the enclosed stone wall area:
November 24, 2012
Harmony United Methodist Church & Cemetery, Hamilton, VA
Enslaved individuals that attended Harmony Church had their own separate burial space adjacent to the white congregant burials. The original slave cemetery location was apparently ignored by Harmony Church and parts were turned into a parking lot in the 1990s. After much outrage, Harmony UMC erected a memorial to the people who may or may not still be buried there (witnesses saw bulldozers plowing through the land and were not told if the bodies had been removed and reinterred elsewhere). The surviving headstones that had marked the disturbed graves of the former slaves and their descendants were later made into a communal marker.
Hand carved slate markers:
White congregant burials:
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