This week, it was announced that The Cultural Heritage and Archaeology Research Group at Wake Forest University has received a $20,000 Large Project Grant from North Carolina Humanities to support the mapping project at Historic Odd Fellows Cemetery in Winston Salem, North Carolina. The grant will support Wake Forest students in carrying out the mapping efforts, and leading workshops to teach community members about the using the mapping software and research database. The grant will also support Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) of four acres of the site through a unique partnership with New South Associates, a Cultural Resource Management Firm who’s geophysics division is based in Greensboro, North Carolina. Through this partnership, CHARG staff and students will learn from New South how to conduct GPR survey and analysis, making GPR survey more accessible to communities, and providing job training to future archaeologists in a skillset that is in high demand.
The Odd Fellows Cemetery is a 12 acre African American cemetery founded ca. 1907, and located on Shoreline Drive, just minutes from Wake Forest University’s Reynolda Campus. It has seen periods of neglect due to being land-locked for a decades. The Friends of the Odd Fellows, a 501c3 non profit organization, have been working to restore the site for over two decades, and have received statewide recognition for their efforts. CHARG has been working with the Friends for the past two years, organizing cleanups such as Pro Humanitate Days and class visits, and advising on issues heritage, preservation, and research. Two major endeavors, to map every burial and to research every person buried at the site are being undertaken in different capacities by CHARG at the behest of the Friends. This grant will help to support these endeavors, providing needed funding to ensure that all 10,000 individuals are identified and their stories are told.
Unfortunately, this grant will not cover all of the costs that will be associated with mapping the cemetery – it will only address 1/3 of the property. Efforts will focus on four distinct components of the cemetery where the property has been effectively cleared of brush, overgrowth, and debris, yet also present different contexts which willl be ideal for training. The first two acres are near the entrance of the cemetery, and are in the best condition (section B and C on the map). These have visible headstones and plots, but also the potential for many unmarked burials. The second two acres are areas where no headstones are visible. One is a paved area that was originally part of a city parking lot (section A.2). A second is a grassy area that appears to have been graded at some point during the 1980s, meaning that no grave depressions are visible (Section N). All of these areas will undergo GPR survey.
This grant is also dependent on matching funds, which have been provided generously by the Program of African American Studies, the College of Arts and Sciences, The Humanities Institute at Wake Forest University, the Office of the Provost, and private donors who have contributed to The CHARG Fund. If you are interested in supporting this ongoing work, please consider making a donation, or email Dr. Terry Brock at brockt@wfu.edu.
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