Who Is Buried Here?

Who Is Buried Here?. . , An uncertain number of people remain interred here today, and few records survive to indicate who they may be , a problem complicated by several factors. Slavery, segregation, and racist inconsistencies in record-keeping are among them., Although there was some advocacy for reinterring people from this Burial Ground site to the newer Fairview Cemetery in the 1870s, it is unclear to what extent that happened. The best indicators of who lived and died in Charles Town when the Burial Ground was active are the 1830, 1840, and 1850 Census Records, and the Jefferson County Death Register between 1853 and 1875. There were several hundred African American residents in Charles Town during that time., In 1835, the Virginia General Assembly passed an act which incorporated the Virginia Slave Insurance Company in Charles Town for the purposes of "compensating slaveholders of runaway slaves" and for the deaths of the individuals they enslaved. This likely explains why the deaths of free people were missing from the records before 1860., The Jefferson County Courthouse began recording deaths in 1853. Between 1853 and 1860, for Charles Town, only enslaved individuals were listed, except two free people: abolitionists John Anthony Copeland, Jr. (above left), and Shields Green (above right), who both participated in the revolt against slavery in Harper's Ferry in 1859 with John Brown. Copeland and Green were hanged in Charles Town on December 16, 1859. Both men were buried in Charles Town, but were soon exhumed and dissected at Winchester Medical School. The burial ground was active then and is located near the hanging site on South Samuel Street., Some of the African Americans who lived and likely died in Charles Town during the era in which the Burial Ground was active include Party Webb, who was 80 years old in the 1850 census. She lived in the stone house (shown above) on what is now known as East North Street with her family. Another was Bersheba Welcome, who lived at 213 South West Street and died in 1866. Her husband, John Welcome, served in the War of 18 12. Records indicate John is buried in Fairview Cemetery, but Fairview did not yet exist when he died in 1873, so he may have been moved from the Burial Ground.