Coleman Cemetery

Here follows an excerpt from the Center for Mason's Legacies website about the Fairfax County African American History Inventory:

This is a historically African American Cemetery. The land for this cemetery was purchased by the Churches and Fraternities Association of Alexandria on Oct. 27, 1944. It appears that many of the older graves were relocated from an Odd Fellows Cemetery established by the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows, Stevens Lodge No. 1435 that stood on nearly two acres near the intersection of Washington Boulevard and Columbia Pike in Arlington. Selena and Thornton Gray of Arlington House have a relatively new tombstone here. Other families may have been moved here as well. The majority of tombstones are dated after 1960. A 2015 Washington Post article indicated that there were unclaimed remains from Washington DC that have been relocated here as well but may be unmarked.

The oldest gravestone is marked 1892, but it is likely moved from another location. The cemetery includes formal markers, field stones, concrete and wooden markers, and funeral home markers.


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Here follows an excerpt from "Those Upon Whom the Curtain Has Fallen: Past and Present Cemeteries of Old Town Alexandria, Virginia With Walking Tours of Old Town" written by Mark D. Greenly:

Moore-Holland Cemetery Site
Once located near the southeast comer of Echols Avenue and Seminary Road. Had it's frontage on Seminary Road, and was between 448 and 4S9 feet deep. May have once been used for burial of slaves and freedmen. Owned by members of Moore and Holland families beginning in 1881. Active into second quarter of the twentieth century. Known graves were moved about 1978-79 to Coleman Cemetery, 1900 Collingwood Road, Fairfax County. Townhouse construction may have obliterated other unmarked graves.


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Here follows an excerpted article from the Washington Post newspaper:

Washington’s unclaimed remains in unmarked graves next to trash cans
July 19, 2015

By Terrence McCoy
Coleman Cemetery is a sloping spit of land wedged against a cluster of million-dollar mansions in the Alexandria section of Fairfax County. Three acres wide, it’s the sort of graveyard people glance at as they whiz past, then likely never think of again. But this place bears a distinction: Hundreds of Washington’s poorest residents are buried here. And you’d never know it.

On a recent Monday, a man who tends to this cemetery sidestepped its headstones. He arrived at a plot of earth smaller than a racquetball court. Three trash cans and a shed overlooked a mass of tangled grass.

“These are where the graves are from D.C.,” said Ron Reaves, 73, his eyes cast down at the sodden earth. “If you walk through here, you’ll step in places like, ‘Oh, look, this is a grave. And this is a grave.’ People are buried all around here. People who don’t have enough money.”

This is the story of what happens to the District’s unclaimed dead — those who die so alone, so destitute that no one comes forward to pay for a funeral, leaving the job to the government. No tombstones bear their names. Their identities are not publicized. Invisible in life, they are also invisible in death.

It isn’t supposed to be this way.

In 2007, the city signed a contract with W.H. Bacon Funeral Services to dispose of the city's unclaimed remains. One of W.H. Bacon's duties, according to an annually renewed contract obtained by The Washington Post, is to erect "a permanent marker at the burial site or mausoleum bearing the decedent's name and the . . . case number."

It’s the same situation at the plot for unclaimed remains at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Baltimore, where W.H. Bacon started laying the remains of District residents last year, as the Web site Vice first reported. No markers. No tombstones.

District officials say they are investigating whether W.H. Bacon has complied with its contract. "We would like to wait until our whole investigation has completed" before commenting more, said Beverly Fields, spokeswoman for the District's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, the agency tasked with disposing of unclaimed remains.

The agency declined to divulge the identities attached to the remains that W.H. Bacon has buried, citing “relevant District laws and regulations.” But Fields said the agency makes every effort to contact relatives and directs inquiring families to W.H. Bacon Funeral Home.

Wendell Bacon, a funeral home manager, defended the parlor’s work. “The thing you should be asking is why people don’t claim their loved ones,” he said. “Some people have the money. That’s the story.”

He added: “I do the [contract] to the T.”

Anonymity crosses eras
In the District, there’s nothing new about leaving the poor in unmarked graves. Those who filled the city’s first known potter’s field, established in 1806 at what is today near the intersection of Seventh and M streets NW, lived at a place called the Old Poorhouse.

Others — the disease-ravaged, the unwanted — vanished into unmarked, mass graves across the city.

That the anonymity of that time endures in this age of fast information came as a surprise to Anne Brockett, a cemetery historian for the District’s Historic Preservation Office.

“It’s not like back in the day, when you weren’t sure who they were,” she said. The poor then didn’t often carry identifying documentation, but today “is a different era when information is much more readily available and should end up on a tombstone.”

It does elsewhere. For example, Fairfax County lays every unclaimed body into its own grave underneath an individual tombstone chiseled with the person's name and dates of birth and death.

Unlike the District, many other jurisdictions — including Detroit’s Wayne County, Seattle’s King County and Los Angeles County — release the names of the unclaimed to the public.

After attempting to contact relatives and waiting three days for them to come forward, Maryland donates its unclaimed remains to medical research, declaring on a graveyard monument its “deep appreciation for those who gave unselfishly of themselves to advance medical education.”

“Maryland has always had a system,” said Ronn Wade, an official with the state Anatomy Board, which handles unclaimed remains.

Wade said the number of unclaimed bodies in the state has risen steadily in recent decades. In 1973, the state buried 60 unclaimed bodies — but last year, it handled 729. This surge, Wade said, isn’t just about population growth or poverty. Rather, life spans have lengthened and families have grown smaller, more spread out and less close-knit.

“If you live to 93 and you’ve outlived all of your siblings and your relatives, you’re going to be coming to me,” he said. “And that’s just how it is.”

District officials also hesitate to connect the District's unprecedented swell in homelessness with a recent increase in unclaimed bodies. Between 2008 and 2014, the District buried
711 people, with the annual number rising from 90 to 125, or about 40 percent, according to city data. That number also included
50 veterans.

During that time, the city spent $390,000 for handling the remains from beginning to end, including cremations and burials, or about $548 per body. The cost of cremation alone for the public generally starts at about $1,000 per body.

The city usually finds relatives, but in around 90 percent of cases, families and friends simply decline to claim their dead, said Mikelle DeVillier, general counsel of the district’s medical examiner. The agency “makes every effort to reunify decedents with their loved ones,” she said.

But even if the relatives fail to claim them, Reaves said the city owes them the dignity of marking their graves. As human beings, he said, they deserve no less.

“This is a crisis in our country,” Reaves said. He blamed the District government for its role. “They put out a bid for whoever wants to do it, then whoever does is trying to make the most money, so they’re trying to find the cheapest way to do it.”

‘Most likely, it’s the homeless’
W.H. Bacon Funeral Home inhabits a weather-battered building perched along 14th Street in Columbia Heights. Past its creaky door and up its carpeted stairs sits a muscular man named Kevin Mcelhaney. He has worked at W.H. Bacon for more than a year and sometimes handles the city’s unclaimed.

"Most likely, it's the homeless," he said. "One has nowhere to stay, and they're not eating properly, getting the rest that they need. . . . I do the cleaning. It's okay. I've been doing it for 32 years. It takes a good person, a strong person to do this kind of work. It was meant for me to do."

W.H. Bacon, which opened in 1954 and has long serviced the poor of Columbia Heights, started disposing of the city’s unclaimed under contract in 2007. Although the contract requires W.H. Bacon to transport and cremate unclaimed bodies, and erect a permanent marker bearing their names, the parlor can choose the crematory and the cemetery — and what happens when the remains get there.

The bodies first stay at the city morgue for at least 30 days — sometimes longer — before W.H. Bacon arrives. Then Mcelhaney said he carts the bodies 15 miles north to a place called Chesapeake Pet Crematory, which promotes its services on its Web site. “Today most pet owners choose cremation,” says the site, which doesn’t mention anything about humans. “If you like, we at Chesapeake Pet Crematory can help you plan an event that celebrates the life of your pet.”

One crematory employee, who declined to give his name and disclose how much the business charges Bacon because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said its Web site is merely an “advertisement.”

The employee added: “We mostly cremate humans. We just do a little pet cremation here and there for the public.”

Once cremated, the unclaimed remains funnel into individual containers that bear that person’s name. Until last year, W.H. Bacon brought the cremains to Coleman Cemetery, where Reaves would wait. Reaves said the funeral home unloaded a single casket, which would carry a surprising amount of cremains — about 50. He’d charge $1,000 for a grave to put the casket in, then watch as it was lowered into the ground.

On a recent afternoon, Reaves scowled as he padded though Coleman Cemetery toward his Jeep. His family is also buried at this cemetery, he said. He feels a certain fealty to its dead. So he has decided to put up a new tombstone.

“I’m going to spend about $400 to $800 of my own money,” he said. “A basic little headstone that said, ‘These were unclaimed bodies of the District of Columbia.’ ”

Then at least, he said, they won’t be invisible.


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Here follows an excerpt from the Fairfax Genealogical Society website:

COLEMAN CEMETERY
1900 Collingwood Road (Route 628)
South Alexandria, Virginia USA

Original Information from Volume 5 of the Gravestone Books

Coleman Cemetery is located at 1900 Collingwood Road (Route 628) on the north side of the street. This community cemetery is in a residential neighborhood, south of the Hollin Hall area and east of Gum Springs, adjacent to the Snowden & Bethlehem Cemetery which lies on the western edge of Coleman Cemetery.

According to Cemeteries of Fairfax County, Virginia by Brian A. Conley, the Churches and Fraternities Association of Alexand-ria purchased this property on 27 October 1944 (Deed Book 444:RD264). Most of the marked graves date from the 1960s to the present. A granite marker at the covered enclosure in the middle of the cemetery reads:

FOUNDERS OF COLEMAN CEMETERY

Robert H. Butler
Father A. M. Cochran
Willie Dickerson
Mary C. Gaddis
Clinton Jackson
Rev. S. B. Ross
Rev. R. B. Strong
George Turner
Ella Washington
W. F. Watson
Rev. J. G. West
Dedicated July 12, 1975


The cemetery is fenced along the back and on the east side. There is no fence at the front of the cemetery, although fence posts stand along Collingwood Road. Two signs along the road identify the site as Coleman Cemetery.

The area appears to be periodically mowed, but many of the gravestones are in need of repair and maintenance. The ground is very uneven in many places and surveyors noted evidence of poor drainage. Many gravestones are tilting and sinking into the ground. Many are partially covered by dirt or have tilted so far as to topple off their bases. Surveyors were unable to read the entire inscription on some of these markers. Surveyors also noted evidence of many unmarked graves. Large piles of dirt and some trash were seen at the site.

There is no cemetery office on the grounds of the cemetery. In the spring of 1998, one surveyor saw flower arrangements left near the enclosure in the center of the cemetery rather than being placed on graves.

Members of the Fairfax Genealogical Society surveyed the cemetery in the spring of 1998. The gravestones were reread by surveyors in June 1998. Members of the Mount Vernon Genealogical Society also surveyed Coleman Cemetery during the summer of 1998. The two surveys were compared and all discrepancies were rechecked.

The cemetery is divided into three sections or areas by narrow circular roads. The survey begins in the front section, near Collingwood Road, with the gravestone in the northeast corner of the section. Surveyors read the markers row by row, making a U-turn at the end of each row and walking back again.

The survey continues with the gravestones under the cedar tree which stands directly across the road from the covered area.

The survey continues with the gravestones in the middle section of the cemetery. The first gravestone stands near the concrete block structure in the southeast corner of this section.

The survey continues with the gravestones in the back section, beginning with the gravestones along the eastern edge of the cemetery.

During the June 1998 survey, researchers noted several granite gravestones piled behind the concrete block storage structure. They returned in July 1998 and cut back the weeds and brambles covering these grave markers and recorded the following inscriptions:

Willie Earl Murchison
“Beloved son” 3 Jun 1959 26 Apr 1984
Willie James Mills
“Gone but not forgotten” 24 Sep 1936 27 Apr 1985
Charles P. Smith 1918 1986
Deloyd Burrus 1943 1990
Ralph C. Lawrence 3 May 1904 14 Aug 1984
Brenda D. Lawrence 1 Mar 1905 4 Apr 1985
William Curris (sic) Young 29 Aug 1934 4 May 1989
Thurmon O. Blackmon 14 Dec 1923 1 Jan 1985
Lucy P. Blackmon 9 Aug 1924 6 May 1984

Update/Corrections/Additions from Volume 6 of the Gravestone Books

COLEMAN CEMETERY - UPDATE
Society member David McGarvey came across information regarding burials in Coleman Cemetery while searching the USGenWeb homepage for Arlington County, Virginia. The information is based on Graveyards of Arlington County Virginia, compiled by the Arlington Genealogy Club. We consulted this source and learned the following.

The Odd Fellows Cemetery established by the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows, Stevens Lodge No. 1435, stood on nearly two acres near the intersection of Washington Boulevard and Columbia Pike in Arlington. It was founded in 1870 by twelve African-Americans, some of whom were former slaves. The last burial in the cemetery was in 1959. By 1964, the site, which had been a “familiar landmark” at the intersection, had become an eyesore because the surviving lodge members were unable to maintain the cemetery and unable to pay for its maintenance.

The site was purchased by a developer who worked out an agreement with the lodge members for the removal and reinterment of the burials. “Identified graves with their markers or stones would be removed to Coleman Cemetery. All other graves identified by an interested party would be moved to Coleman Cemetery and identified with a metal marker. All deceased persons not identified by grave markers or not identified within six months following the agreement would be placed in one large section of Coleman Cemetery and identified as ‘Unidentified and Unknown Persons Removed From the Graveyard of Stevens Lodge #1435 of the Odd Fellows of Alexandria, Arlington County, Va.’ Those persons desiring removals of family members to locations other than Coleman Cemetery were properly compensated.” Some burials were moved to Pleasant Valley Cemetery in Annandale and Lincoln Cemetery in Suitland, Maryland. Graveyards of Arlington County Virginia reports that of the over 700 people who were buried in the Odd Fellows Cemetery, only 164 were identified. The book lists those identified by grave markers and those reported by family members, as well as the names of those who were removed to Lincoln and Pleasant Valley. A Sheraton Hotel stands at the site today.

Graveyards also reports removals of some graves from Calloway United Methodist Church, 5000 Lee Highway (Route 29), to Coleman Cemetery in the late 1950s or early 1960s, to accommodate the widening of Lee Highway.

Note: Society surveyors who worked in Coleman Cemetery in 1998 recorded few, if any, of the metal markers mentioned in the agreement. They did not find a marker or plaque identifying removals from the Odd Fellows Cemetery.