The Colony / Mount Olive / Bedford Chapel Cemetery

The Colony, also, Mount Olive, also, Bedford Chapel Cemetery. . , The Colony. After the Civil War, African Americans from across the former Confederacy settled here, in a farming community called The Colony. Many owned their own farms and others were sharecroppers. The community established the Mount Olive Baptist Church in the mid-1870s, which also housed the local school until a schoolhouse was built nearby in the 1890s. About 1880, the Bedford Chapel Colored Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church was founded. When its building burned in the 1950s, many of its members joined the Mount Olive Baptist Church. The Colony thrived though the 1930s, then slowly dwindled as residents sought opportunities elsewhere. Since 1972, descendants have held biennial reunions to celebrate The Colony’s legacy., Mount Olive / Bedford Chapel Cemetery. The Mount Olive / Bedford Chapel Cemetery and Mount Olive Baptist Church are the last remnants of the African American community called The Colony. The cemetery contains more than 90 burials, marked and unmarked, dating from the early 20th century and continuing into the 21st. Members of both local churches, including early settlers of the community and veterans of both world wars, are buried here. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2019, it is significant due to its association with the story of The Colony and for the fact that many graves exhibit funerary art and customs characteristic of similar rural African American communities.