Barbee-Hargraves Historic Slave Cemetery

This is the location of a burial site for enslaved persons before the Civil War and African Americans in the following decades. The cemetery is believed to have been an active burial site between 1790 and 1915. Located in the Greenwood subdivision, the property was once owned by the Morgan, Barbee, and Hargrave families. The Morgans were one of the early families of European origin to settle in Chapel Hill. The cemetery contains 53 potential graves sites of African Americans who were enslaved by the Morgan, Barbee, and Hargrave families, as well as some of the descendants of those enslaved persons in the decades that followed emancipation. Today, the cemetery is owned and maintained by the Town of Chapel Hill.

The Barbee-Hargrave Cemetery is located near the Greenwood subdivision in Chapel Hill. The land was once owned by members of the Morgan, Hargrave, and Strowd families, some of the first settler families to the area in the eighteenth century. Mark Morgan appears to be one of the earliest white settlers in the area. He acquired numerous land grants for tracts of land along the Upper New Hope Creek watershed and its principal tributary which now bears his name (Morgan Creek). In January 1763, Morgan received a land grant of 600 acres, known as the "Chappel tract," located between Bolin and Morgan Creeks. One of Morgan's sons, Hardy Morgan, subsequently received grants in 1779 and 1788 east of the Chappel tract. Much of this land was later donated for the establishment of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The land passed from Hardy Morgan to his son, Lemuel Morgan. However, 935 acres of property, including the land on which the cemetery now lies, passed from the Morgan family to Jesse Hargrave in 1845 to fulfill a debt owed by Lemuel Morgan to William Barbee. Barbee’s daughter Margaret was the wife of Jesse Hargrave. The Hargraves held the land for roughly thirty years before selling it to Robert Strowd in the 1870s. The land was subdivided and sold in 1928. Paul and Elizabeth Lay Green purchased several of the land parcels and subsequently developed the Greenwood subdivision in the 1940s and 1950s. 

The cemetery was in use from 1790 to 1915 for African-American burials, mainly slaves of the Morgan, Barbee, and Hargrave families and, later, some of their free descendants. 1755 Orange County tax records show that Mark Morgan owned six slaves: Rafe, James, Nell, Cate, Jude, and Cloe. In his 1777 estate inventory, that number had increased to twenty-two. It is also possible that slaves and white slave owners together are buried in the cemetery, although nearly all sites lack etched headstones making a conclusive decision difficult.

The cemetery fell into disrepair in the 1970s, and initial survey efforts in 1973 indicated between 40-50 gravesites on the location. In May 2011, Preservation Chapel Hill (PCH) conducted a more detailed survey using modern archaeological methods including soil density testing and pedestrian inspection to note linear depressions and grave markers. This inspection found a total of 53 potential burials, 24 with a stone marker at one or both ends, and the other 29 with no visible stone markers. Most of these graves were arranged in noticeable rows, increasing the level of certainty of graves on the site.

David Southern, Report on the Barbee-Hargrave Cemetery, March 2011, in the Preservation Archive, Neighborhood and Preservation Efforts Records, Preservation Chapel Hill, accessed through: https://www.townofchapelhill.org/government/departments-services/parks-and-recreation/cemeteries/barbee-hargraves-cemetery

Scott Seibel, Investigation of the Barbee-Hargrave Cemetery, Chapel Hill, Orange County, North Carolina, May 2011, in the Preservation Archive, Neighborhood and Preservation Efforts Records, Preservation Chapel Hill, accessed through: https://www.townofchapelhill.org/government/departments-services/parks-and-recreation/cemeteries/barbee-hargraves-cemetery

Barbee-Hargraves Cemetery, Town of Chapel Hill. Accessed May 8th 2021. https://www.townofchapelhill.org/government/departments-services/parks-and-recreation/cemeteries/barbee-hargraves-cemetery.

John Sharpe, "Study Uncovers Black Gravesites - One Down, Two Cemeteries to Go," The Chapel Hill News, May 11, 2011, https://infoweb-newsbank-com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/apps/news/document-view?p=WORLDNEWS&docref=news/1372BBB2446486E8.