The restoration of a historic African American cemetery years in the making is finally nearing the finish line.
Plans are for the District Hill Cemetery in Chickamauga, Georgia, to be fully restored with gravesite markings for the nearly 130 people that were buried there over a century ago.
Joyce Haslerig-Harrison, a fourth-generation landowner of the property, said Friday she hopes to have the cemetery fully open within 12 to 18 months. It's been a long journey with help from all over the state, but Harrison is happy and eager to see it all come together.
"There's a history here, and no one knows that history," Harrison said. "There are so many African Americans that have contributed to this country, and if we don't tell everyone the significance or the value of the people that lived it, who would do it if we don't? It's almost a ministry of service that you're doing for your community and your country to tell those stories."
In the early 1900s, District Hill was designated a "colored" cemetery by longtime Congressman Gordon Lee's family. The cemetery was used through the 1940s, but over time, maintenance on the grounds stopped.
Because of that, the nearly 130 African Americans buried there following the cemetery's public dedication in 1912 had their headstones and plots temporarily lost to history.
The renovation project was started decades ago by Harrison's father, the late Willie Haslerig. He cleared the space of trees, overgrowth and debris and collected the names of every person buried there that he could find through church archives and local families.
Over the years, Harrison took over the family project and has since received help from a number of different groups, classes and churches.
Photo contributed by Walker County Public Relations Director Joe Legge / Plans are nearing completion for the District Hill Cemetery in Chickamauga, Georgia, to be fully restored with gravesite markings for the nearly 130 people that were buried there over a century ago.In the fall of 2017, graduate students from the University of Georgia's College of Environment and Design developed a plan to preserve and maintain the cemetery. Their findings and final project were awarded a top prize by the American Society of Landscape Architects Fund.
Harrison said the team of nine students was incredibly helpful and gave her and her family a blueprint on how to revitalize the cemetery.
Starting in 2016, Dr. Alicia Jackson - a professor at Covenant College - started an African American History course and had her students research and write biographies on the people buried at District Hill. Jackson teaches the class every two years. Each time, she helps Harrison uncover more information on the 130 or so people while giving students a firsthand look at history in the making.
"It's a really powerful experience for the students to learn about African American history and local history," Jackson said. "The vast majority of the students who take my class are not of color and many of them are not from the South, so it's always a really eye-opening experience for them."
Having her students understand their sense of place while literally contributing to the history books is an invaluable experience, Jackson said.
Legal documents from the era indicate that prior to becoming a public cemetery, the land was the site of unmarked graves for hundreds of enslaved people. While the exact location of those bodies would be impossible to determine without digging up the land, Harrison said the plots of the 130 people buried after the cemetery was dedicated can still be restored.
Among those is Mark Thrash, a formerly enslaved groundskeeper for the Chickamauga Battlefield through the late 1800s and early 1900s. Thrash is known to have buried Union and Confederate soldiers and would tell visitors to the battlefield stories of life before the Civil War.
At one point, Thrash was the oldest person in the nation before dying in 1943, just short of his 123rd birthday.
Before Jackson's class came to help, Harrison was able to acquire grant funding for a ground-penetrating radar project to identify the locations of where the bodies are buried. The tool has been instrumental in locating the bodies and deciding where to put the grave markings.
During the week the federal government voted to make Juneteenth a federal holiday, both Harrison and Jackson understood the importance of honoring the lives of the people who helped build the city of Chickamauga and continuing to remind people of the contributions African Americans made to the country.
"It makes these people real," Jackson said. "I think as students it's easy to sort of say, 'OK, that's a name on a page or they're just an African American that happened to live in North Georgia.' Once you start learning that someone's father was born in Gordon County and migrated here in 1865 and was a farmer, it brings them to life and is also a way to uncover a history that oftentimes is lost."
Harrison said it's important to remember, especially today, the story of who is buried there and what they did is not a uniquely African American tale.
"It's not an African American story," Harrison said. "It's an American story."
Contact Patrick Filbin at pfilbin@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6476. Follow him on Twitter @PatrickFilbin.