A Grave Situation

THE INSPIRATION FOR RAINVILLE’S RECENT BOOK, Hidden History: African American Cemeteries in Central Virginia, traces back to a freshman year research project decoding headstones in the College’s cemetery. Rainville later transcribed more than 2,500 headstones throughout Hanover for her honors thesis before she went on to earn a doctorate in Near Eastern archaeology at the University of Michigan. For the past several years the humanities professor at Sweet Briar College and director of its historic preservation center, Tusculum Institute, has focused her scholarship on historical African American burial grounds. She considers them an often overlooked—and sometimes unknowingly bulldozed—gateway to understanding our cultural past. “These cemeteries are outdoor museums,” says Rainville, who dodged snakes and hunting dogs to catalog the cemeteries in her book. “They contain folk carvings and information about genealogy and slavery.”

According to Rainville, African American cemeteries from the slavery and post-bellum periods differ from mod- ern cemeteries in that they were designed to blend with the natural landscape and feature a variety of markings, from plantings to wooden markers and granite slabs. In slave graveyards the vast majority of headstones bear no inscription (it was illegal for slaves to read or write) but instead may be cryptically marked with flipped let- ters and Christian and African sym- bols, which Rainville says represent a “powerful example of resistance.” She finds cemeteries fascinating because they reflect “peoples’ values for their lives.” She also enjoys connecting with descendants through an online database of her work, available at lynnrainville.org.

lynnrainville.org.

LYNN’S TOP TIPS FOR CEMETERY VISITS never lean on a gravestone. “They are not as solid as they look.” don’t try to clean a gravestone. “Bleach eats away at inscriptions.” treat an epitaph like a page in a book. “Pick apart words, icons and the way they reference a person’s death.” Watch out for footstones. “For much of the 19th century graves were considered resting places, and footstones marked the foot of the body.” ~ ~ ~