In February and April 2003, a group of Boy Scouts led by Eagle Scout Brandon Blake cleared the underbrush and removed limbs and other debris from the site.
Once the forest debris had been removed, the Scouts mapped about 85 graves, based on fieldstones and by visually assessing deformities in the ground. Finally, they placed markers beside the visible depressions and field stones and rebuilt the fence around the gravesite’s boundary.
Greenville News writer Anna Simon documented the work in her piece published April 30, 2003, entitled:
Scouts Clear Years Away From Slave Cemetery
By Anna Simon
CLEMSON BUREAU
asimon@greenvillenews.com
CLEMSON — Armed with yard tools, Brandon Blake and about 15 other members of Clemson Boy Scout Troop 235 attacked a 100-foot by 100-foot tangle of fallen leaves and downed trees inside two strands of sagging barbed wire.
Their mission on that overcast February day was to begin to uncover and restore what is believed to be a slave cemetery owned by Gen. Andrew Pickens, an American Revolutionary era leader who Pickens County is named for.
Pickens, who is buried at Old Stone Church in Clemson, lived near the high knoll that today is in woods behind chicken houses at Clemson University’s poultry farm on Cherry Road.
Two months later, the site looks like a park. New fencing and a gate surround a stand of tall blackgum, sourwood, dogwood and oak trees that rise above the graves.
Scouts uncovered row after row of fieldstones that mark about 150 unmarked graves.
There are only three headstones. Two bear names: Hannah, the wife of James Reese, who died in 1857 at the age of 49, and Loutilda Thompson who was born June 10, 1916, and died Dec. 20, 1918. The third stone bears only the initials T.E.M.
“You couldn’t see much at the beginning,” said Blake, 17, who organized the effort as his Eagle Scout service project.
As they removed the rotting leaves and forest debris, the Scouts uncovered stone after stone and worked carefully to avoid moving any rocks.
“You’d just trip over them,” Blake said. “You’re digging away and there’s another rock. There’s a lot more here than I thought there would be.”
Scouts have marked all the graves with short sections of white PVC pipe hammered into the ground. They will add permanent markers later. The next step will be to try to piece together the history of the cemetery and map out the graves, Blake said.
The most interesting part of the project has been connecting with local history, said Blake, a junior at D.W. Daniel High, who is considering majoring in history in college.
There’s not much information to go on as Blake tries to put a history together, said Paul Kankula, a genealogist, who is working with the scouts to determine if the cemetery was the slave cemetery of Pickens, whose homestead was only one-quarter mile away.
Kankula believes the cemetery was a slave cemetery because so many graves were unmarked, because they are shallow and because of the proximity to where slave quarters were in relation to Pickens’ home.
He also believes the cemetery was multi-generational because of the number if graves and the centuries spanned by the two marked headstones.
Kankula hopes that a sibling or niece or nephew of two-year-old Loutilda Thompson, buried there in 1918, might be in the area today and know some of the history.
Chris Day, writing for the Daily Messenger on June 19, 2003, published the following account:
Old graveyard believed to be slave cemetery
By CHRIS DAY
newsed@dailyjm.com
CLEMSON — There is a forgotten graveyard in a straw-covered forest out back behind a Clemson University facility. One Seneca resident has an idea who is buried there.
“It’s speculated it’s a slave cemetery of Gen. Andrew Pickens,” said Paul Kankula, who specializes in compiling research data for applications such as family genealogies.
The cemetery is located behind the Morgan Poultry Center, off Old Cherry Road.
Kankula believes his theory makes sense, because he said that Pickens’ home was situated within walking distance of the graveyard.
Kankula said that Pickens’ son, Andrew Pickens Jr., also kept slaves on the property of his home, and the slaves’ living quarters were located in close proximity of the cemetery, too.
Kankula said the graves are shallow, most likely dug with wooden planks, since slave owners didn’t allow their slaves the use of metal tools, like shovels.
Added to that, he said, it would have been tough for the slaves to dig through the red clay.
Trying to prove that it’s a cemetery for slaves, though, is tough, said Kankula. There are readable tombstones remaining.
Kankula said that all efforts to contact any possible relatives of the names on the markers came up empty.
One stone reads, “In memory of Hannah, the wife of James Reese, who died June 8th, 1857. Aged 49 years. This stone is erected by James Reese.”
Late last April, Boy Scouts from Clemson’s Troop 235, led by Eagle Scout candidate Brandon Blake, 17, spent several days clearing the land on which the cemetery sits. Blake and his crew plotted the cemetery with string and placed a piece of plastic pipe at the spot of each marker.
Blake’s father, James Blake, said Gen. Pickens’ home was located so close to the cemetery that where it stood is now submerged in Lake Hartwell. The father said his son’s next project is to map the cemetery, and to number each grave.
If it’s learned for certain that the 100- by 100-foot graveyard is a slave cemetery, Mr. Blake said the scouts would like to have a sign permanently placed to remember it as such.
Kankula said that he learned about the cemetery after a friend, who has conducted 20 years of cemetery research, asked him to compile her information into one source. He is the homestead coordinator for an Oconee County genealogy Web site, www.rootsweb.com/~scoconee/oconee.html, and a Pickens County Web site,
www.rootsweb.com/~scpicke2.
