from the print version of The Free Press newspaper

“Unearthing a shameful past along Holman’s Creek”

Posted April 14, 2016 by Mona Casteel

It took more than a year to rescue a field from briars, brush and negligence. But the care given is tribute to those buried more than 150 years ago in that long-forgotten refuge.

What became the final resting place for slaves working and living along Holman’s Creek at Quicksburg will be dedicated later this month after volunteers’ restoration efforts have found what they believe are two dozen burial plots.

The remains are those of slaves who likely worked at the Edge Hill Manor plantation along the creek.

The graveyard rests on the side of a wooded knoll along a boundary line that was noted in the 1750 Fairfax grants, said Sarah Kohrs, Corhaven Graveyard’s director.  It contains about two dozen sunken graves, some with fieldstone markers, two with un-inscribed manufactured monument bases and one with obelisk-shaped fieldstones.

Dedication will be held April 30 at 2 p.m. to make sure those buried are no longer lost to the earth or forgotten in time.

That the graves would continue to be lost said Kohrs would have been a real possibility had it not been for a casual conversation the land’s owners had with an acquaintance.

About six years ago, Bill and Tara Haley of Quicksburg bought a couple of acres of the land at Quicksburg. While shopping at a local store some time later, they met someone who questioned them about having bought a cemetery.

It came as a surprise to say the least, said Kohrs.

The Haleys gathered friends, preservationists and historians to plan the restoration project. In early 2015, they together began sifting through weeds and scrub trees and clearing the acreage. What they found was a goldmine of history.

Fittingly, the project took off on Jan. 15, the birthday of famed civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.

Working with a JMU team of historical preservationists using remote sensing devices, they found 24 earth depressions, said Kohrs. Two small areas, about one meter in length, indicate children’s graves. The other, about two meters long, likely hold adults’ remains.

A regional archeologist confirmed the findings, said Kohrs.

Northern Shenandoah Master Gardeners joined the effort and helped discover residuals of long-ago plantings in the graveyard.

“We found rose bushes, white violates and honeysuckle at some sites and even grapevine in the area of where a child would have been buried,” said Kohrs. “That just shows how much compassion they had for each other. …what a sentimental gesture…the people became a family. And even if they lost their own family members, they mourned and suffered together. They looked at the others as all their family.”

Because few slaves knew how to read or write, there were no marked stones at the gravesites. As a result the team of workers cannot determine the graveyard’s beginning date. They do, however, believe the burial there occurred at about the end of the Civil War.

Col. James Madison Hite Beale bought the reunified land from original Holman land grants acquired from Lord Fairfax in 1829, said Kohrs.

Beale built Edge Hill that was completed in 1840 but sold it to Samuel Moore in 1846, records show. Moore owned the property that included the slave cemetery during the Civil War and until his death in 1869. At one time, the graveyard was recognized as “Sam Moore’s Slave Cemetery.”

His family inherited the land, but the history becomes a little sketchy after that, said Kohrs.

Today Chad and Rachel Logan own Edge Hill and are the Haleys’ neighbors.

The graveyard is located about a half mile from Edge Hill.

Kohrs says the use of “graveyard” rather than “cemetery” is deliberate. A cemetery suggests more care, perhaps an area more structured in design. Because of its crude beginnings and its extended abandonment, Corhaven Graveyard seems fitting.

Translated, Corhaven means “ heart” and “rest.” Again, fitting for an old-established, yet newly-discovered site that’s melding generations and races.

The Haleys conduct spiritual retreats and work for social justice. That the graveyard dating two centuries ago lies in the shadow of their home where peace and justice are advocated and spoken of is appropriate. It’s a gesture of commemorating and remembering that is, well, fitting.