Longmeadow's African Graveyard

Longmeadow’s First Church of Christ was established at the turn of the 18th century. The arrival of its minister, the Reverend Stephen Williams, was hailed as a crucial moment in the creation of a town independent from Springfield. Reverend Williams kept an extremely detailed diary, long an object of fascination by local historians and made even more accessible when, in the 1930s, its aging script was transcribed with typewriters and financial support from the Works Progress Administration. Along with the day-book of Samuel Colton, it is one of the most detailed sources in the region regarding Longmeadow’s participation in American slavery. Members of the Longmeadow Historical Society have written about these documents for centuries. R.S. Storr’s et. al’s “INSTITUTIONS AND CUSTOMS” (1883) provides key information, albeit without citation, about how slavery manifested in the particular space of the church and the cemetery. “In the old church they had their pew in the gallery, and in the burying-ground their appointed place was the southeast corner.” 

In the last ten years, members of the current Historical Society have worked diligently to learn and disseminate more about the history of slavery. Elizabeth Hoff’s “Enslaved in Longmeadow” (2016) is an encyclopedic recounting of every known enslaved individual and slaveholder in town — it provides a crucial foundation of content. Even more recently, following the mention of a “southeast corner,” members of the Cemetery Commission scanned the region around in the summer of 2020. Their ground-penetrating radar appears to have located dozens of bodies in an unmarked area. We would require more evidence to confirm this site as Longmeadow’s burial ground for enslaved people, but as a complement to historical documents it seems highly likely.

In colonial New England, the burial grounds of enslaved people were separated from those of whites in order to preserve the evolving racial hierarchy. One consequence of this segregation was the creation of a space which Black communities defined as their own. Historian Ira Berlin describes the African burial grounds (as they came to be called) “the first truly African-American institution in mainland North America.” Enslaved people would commemorate the dead with African and African-inflected ceremonies, “provid[ing] the dead with appropriate respect and giving the living a chance to be together.” Associations were better-organized in larger cities; the double-digit population of enslaved people in Longmeadow lacked both numbers and spatial distance. Their burial ground loomed under the shadow of the First Church — Stephen Williams’ diary indicates that whites both baptized enslaved people and attended their funerals.

As the town of Longmeadow moves forward with the knowledge of these graves, a host of dilemmas will arise around memory and this space. African graveyards have been excavated across the Northeast, providing a wealth of historical information but infuriating descendant communities. Memorialization seems uncontroversially essential, but again, the question of descendant communities looms. The well-tended gravestones of the “Olde Burying Yard” signal clear connections to living progeny, but the absence of records and spatial markers has long obscured prevented kinships — genetic and fictive — between Longmeadow’s enslaved people and Black people alive today. In all likelihood, the white-dominated institutions of First Church and the Longmeadow government will have an effective final say over whose authority counts. 

Regardless of what unfolds in the African graveyard, its rediscovery redefines how we imagine the gravesites of famous whites. Every Halloween, the Historical Society runs a “Ghosts in the Graveyard” tour of graves in the “Olde Burying Yard.” Dressing up and getting in character, volunteers stand over the graves of dead white men and women and, in the first person, tell the stories of their lives. Some discuss service in the Revolution and the Civil War; others point to the historic houses — just across the street — which their characters built. Stories of injustice, inhumanity, and historical erasure are much more difficult to remember.

Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. 

Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1998. 138.

Cantwell, Anne-Marie E., and Diana DiZerega, Wall. Unearthing Gotham : The Archaeology 

of New York City. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.

Hoff, Elizabeth. “Enslaved in Longmeadow.” Longmeadow Historical Society. 

https://www.longmeadowhistoricalsociety.org/towncrier/enslaved-in-longmeadow.html

“Stephen Williams’ Diary Online.” Longmeadow Library. 

https://www.longmeadowlibrary.org/stephen-williams-diary-online/

“The Olde Burying Yard.” Longmeadow Historical Society. 

https://www.longmeadowhistoricalsociety.org/olde_burying_yard.html