BURIALS ON THE BLUFF: MAPPING THE UNMARKED BURIALS OF THE ENSLAVED POPULATION OF FORT DEFIANCE.

Fort Defiance in Lenoir, NC is a historic site that preserves the ancestral home of General William Lenoir. The site includes a large plantation house, smokehouse, the Lenoir family cemetery and a newly discovered burial ground identified with near-surface geophysical prospection. This cemetery likely represents the final resting place of enslaved persons who lived at the plantation from 1792 to 1865. The family papers mention a “negro cemetery” but omits its location and size. The goal of this project is to identify the burials and create a map of the cemetery’s boundaries for the Board of Directors.

We used ground penetrating radar (GPR) to detect anomalies in the subsurface interpreted as unmarked burials. A GPR survey with 400 MHz and 350 MHz hyper stacking antennas covered 1.08 acres at 1 ft N-S transect spacing. The GPR data were processed and GPR profiles and depth slices (0.3 ft thick) were used to interpret the subsurface.

The survey area was established based on historical aerial photographs, personal communication with a descendant of the enslaved population, and the presence of periwinkle plants historically associated with burial areas. Fieldstones and surficial depressions were observed in some areas of the cemetery.

Unmarked burials are identified by anomalies or reflections in the GPR data produced by the contrast in electrical properties between in-situ soils and homogenous back-fill in the graves. The anomalies include shallow reflections off the walls of the grave shaft and deep reflections off the bottom of the grave.

The anomalies are near the slave quarters in a wooded area, south of the plantation house. This area is on a bluff overlooking the valley to the East, similar to the Lenoir family cemetery North of the plantation house. Only one headstone was discovered in place, and it is tucked behind a fallen tree. Three piles of rounded quartzite fieldstones were found and may represent cairns built to mark burial plots. Partly buried barbed wire was uncovered and could have enclosed the cemetery. This work will provide a cemetery map for Fort Defiance and allow the preservation of this African American burial ground.