By Amy Couteé Lynchburg News & AdvanceAltavista - The Fauntleroy family roots run deep in the town of Altavista.
Charles "Pete" L. Fauntleroy, 81, knows that, and so, to this day, he continues to share the stories that his father, Walter, handed down to him. So his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren know their ancestors and continue the oral tradition.
And now, thanks to those cherished stories of the past, Fauntleroy has helped Avoca Museum identify what appears to be a derelict graveyard that, without him, may have been permanently lost to the ravages of time.
For Fauntleroy the graveyard was, and is, just another memory of his childhood. It is located on a small parcel of land about 300 yards from Avoca, where he was born in 1923. In a large, cleared field near the old Altavista Farm Service building, the land rises to create a barely noticeable knoll. Just behind the knoll and past a thick row of trees, the land drops off into the briskly moving Staunton River.
The little spot does not stand out as unusual unless you look closer. The knoll is shrouded by thick overgrowth of shrubbery, weeds and wild grass, all encircled by protective elderly trees that curl and lean under the weight of climbing vines.
Under the weeds and ivy are column-shaped stones that were, at some point, drug up from the river. Unlike the stones in the surrounding field, these have been smoothed on one end to be able to stand upright on their own, although they now appear to have been carelessly tossed into two piles. None of the 21 stones carries an inscription, some are oddly small, others squat in shape, a handful are shaped more like triangles.
The poison ivy that crawls over the rocks and claws at visitors' legs, protects a past that no one wrote down.
Anna Monroe, whose family worked the plantation in the late 1800s, also in her 80s, says she remembers.
So does Fauntleroy.
"I know that there was a graveyard there and I know the location," says Fauntleroy, who still lives in Altavista. "I don't know the names of anyone buried there."
During the 1940s, Fauntleroy says the cemetery began to deteriorate. As the land and the city grew up around it, the cemetery was forgotten about and left to the whims of nature.
"They made a pasture out of it," and the land was filled with cattle after the war, says Fauntleroy, who watched as farmers let their cattle graze the rough land that surrounded the small graveyard. He never thought about the cemetery and it never occurred to him that anyone would be interested in it or the past.
But archaeologist Lynn Rainville and Frank Murray, the current director of the Avoca Museum, are very interested.
So interested, in fact, that last month they began the tedious task of going back in time to try and find out if that land is indeed a graveyard and, if so, just who is buried there.
The site and all its attributes, says Rainville, conform closely to those found at historic African American cemeteries in the Piedmont.
It's location - everything from the hillcock (to keep graves safe from floods) to the fact that it's at the edge of an agricultural field within sight of the original plantation home - coupled with the stones that exhibit deliberate signs of shaping, patterns that mirror the shapes found in the Lynch Family Graveyard near the home, indicate it is a graveyard.
Coupled with the memories of Fauntleroy and Monroe, and the hypothesis forms: the area is a cemetery with ties to Avoca and those who lived and worked on the plantation.
Avoca, originally called Green Level, was part of a land grant from the King of England. It originally encompassed much of Campbell County and Lynchburg. The land now, just acres, has been owned by the Lynch/Fauntleroy family since 1741. A log cabin was first built on the land in 1755 followed by another home in the late 1700s.
At the close of the Civil War, Col. Charles Henry Lynch renamed the property Avoca. The original house burned in 1879. A second home was built, only to suffer the same fate. Then, in 1901, the third home, now on the National Historic Registry and designated as a Virginia Historical Landmark, was built.
The entire property was given to the town of Altavista by the Fauntleroys in 1981.
"For me the whole reason to do this research is so that the people in the community learn from them," says Rainville, a visiting assistant professor of archaeology at Sweet Briar College in Amherst.
The key to finding the answers though, says Rainville, is finding the people who remember what Altavista used to be like. Hearing their oral stories is what will provide the information that Rainville and Murray so desperately need to confirm their suspicions.
"We can work backwards" to try and identify who may be buried there, says Rainville, but without the memories of families it could take more than a year.
"It does take so much more work when there are un-inscribed stones," she says.
Without names, Rainville and Murray are left to scour old census reports, hunting for old family bibles that may have family trees or stories in them, searching archives of the plantation and going door to door.
For now, the two continue to follow the paper trail. Then, in October, when the foliage recedes Rainville and her staff will be able to work on site and search the ground for depressions, which may indicate burials.
"But just because there's a depression doesn't mean there is a grave there," says the still cautious Rainville.
To determine whether graves exist, she will place geological tools about a foot into the ground to record soil disturbances, which are another indicator of a gravesite. The tools, she assures, do not go deep enough to make contact with possible remains.
The testing will also reveal any patterns across the area, Patterns that may further support the belief that the knoll houses a graveyard.
Identifying those in the graveyard is important for the museum and its records, but also for the families who may have lost part of their past, says Murray, who like Rainville, believes that the cemetery hosts freed men and slaves as well as a Native American Indian found drowned along the nearby river.
"It's critical (to know who's there) because without it, a huge piece of local history is lost," says Murray, who had garnered grants from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities to support the research on the cemetery. "It's county history and family history in there. I think it's important for all people to know their family roots.
"It's part of the fabric of Altavista. This is about preserving a part of the community's past. Further research may point out the contributions that both the blacks and whites made in the building of this community."
With hands-on help from members of the community, including members of city council, additional grants and donations, Murray hopes to be able to refurbish the graveyard, surround it with a proper gate, add names to the headstones and provide museum-goers with a recording about the cemetery and its place in the history of both Altavista and Avoca.
"There are literally hundreds and hundreds of cemeteries like this out there," says Rainville.
"If you know of these cemeteries out in the woods that have been forgotten about … contact your local historical society because there is a lot that you can learn from these cemeteries. … It's something that any community can participate in."
Contact Amy Couteé at
acoutee@newsadvance.
For information on the Avoca Museum and Avoca Slave Cemetery, please visit
www.faculty.sbc.edu/lrainville/Avoca/home.html.
For media inquiries on Rainville's research, please contact Shannon Wells, Sweet Briar College media relations coordinator, at (434) 381-6388 or
swells@sbc.edu.
