Rockville working to preserve historic African American cemetery

Wheaton High National Honor Society students contribute to clean-up efforts

May 16, 2024 2:02 p.m.

Dodging raindrops and hauling tarps overflowing with woodland debris, National Honor Society students from Wheaton High School spent their day off Tuesday in search of a 19th-century cemetery in Rockville.

As they cleared a wooded area, scattered stone fragments began to pop into view–possibly the remains of gravestones more than 100 years old.

Located in the woods behind Croydon Creek Nature Center, the exact location of the Avery Road Colored Cemetery is unclear, according to Rockville Comprehensive Planning Manager Katie Gerbes. However, that mystery may not persist for much longer. The City of Rockville is collaborating with archaeologists from Goodwin & Associates and Wheaton High’s National Honor Society to preserve the cemetery.

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On Tuesday and April 22, students worked with Rockville’s Department of Community Planning and Development Services to clear dense overgrowth from an acre of land thought to contain the gravesite. The clean-up crew gradually uncovered stone pieces strewn throughout the area, which the archaeology team from Goodwin & Associates identified as possible remnants of headstones and footstones.

“Because this is likely a cemetery in the late 1800s of freed slaves, money was not a thing that was abundant,” Gerbes said. “So they don’t have tombstones similar to, like, across the street at the Rockville Cemetery.”

Avery Road Colored Cemetery is the resting place of Benjamin Franklin Smith–who died in 1924 –and many members of his family. Smith was born into slavery on Glen View Farm and went on to work on farms along Avery Road after emancipation. In 1884, he purchased one acre of land on Glen View, where he raised his family. The cemetery is located east of the property.

“[Smith] raised children and family here but nobody knows because it was an African American cemetery,” Rockville Preservation Planner Sheila Bashiri said. “As often happens, it was just ignored and just went into decline. We’d like to identify it and bring him back to life, really. Make it known that his life mattered.”

Rockville Principal Planner Megan Flick estimated at least 30 potential footstone or headstone locations were identified and marked using pink flags during Tuesday’s event. 

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A pink flag marks what is likely the most well-preserved footstone discovered at Avery Road Colored Cemetery as of Tuesday. Wheaton High students work to clear different areas of the site in the background.

Currently, the number of people buried in the cemetery is unknown and, according to Gerbes, many graves were likely marked with wood that has decayed and vanished.

Rockville received a state grant worth almost $17,000 to conduct the Avery Road Colored Cemetery project last summer, Gerbes said. Work began in February alongside an archaeologist consultancy team from Goodwin & Associates.

Wheaton High’s National Honor Society became involved after honor society sponsor and social studies teacher Lauren Zolkiewicz contacted Gerbes in January.

“[Zolkiewicz] was looking for service learning projects for her students with a specific focus on restorative justice,” Gerbes recalled.

“I wanted [the students] to have a deeper understanding of the history of slavery in Montgomery County, which for so long has been kind of forgotten about,” Zolkiewicz said. “It’s [been] slow to reconnect to that history and make important landmarks and educational areas for people to learn more about it.”

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Fifty-one students participated during the April 22 clean-up and about 20 volunteered Tuesday.

“It’s been awesome,” Gerbes said. “I’m hoping that we can continue to partner with them, whether it’s on this project or other projects in the future because [Zolkiewicz’s] students have shown up on their days off of school [and] they’ve done amazing work.”

Moving forward, Gerbes said project leaders hope the archaeologists will be able to conduct survey work later this spring. Those surveys will determine whether further site clean-ups and surveys are necessary. Once surveying is complete, Gerbes said the project will proceed to the research phase, which includes an underground analysis and historical research into who may be buried in the cemetery.

“Broadly, everyone’s goal is to be able to interpret this history and have this be a site that people can come and they can pay their respects or they can come to learn,” Gerbes said.

Eventually, Gerbes said the city hopes to highlight the cemetery’s history using on-site signage, nature center programming, tours and speaker series. In addition, both Gerbes and Bashiri said the area will ideally undergo some sort of physical enrichment, depending on what the archaeology team discovers.

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