Preserving the past
By Katherine Houstoun CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Mt. Hermon Baptist Church on Genito Road features a Victorian wrought iron fence in front of the old cemetery.

Halloween may be long gone, but local cemeteries won't be infiltrated by roaming spirits for another few months - not until the chigger-infested weeds die down and the snakes go into hibernation.

Ghosts with a fear of snakes? Not quite. These spirits aren't the spectral sort, but rather alive-andwell volunteers from the Chesterfield County Historical Society's Cemetery Committee.

The six-person committee, led by chairman Rachel Lipowicz, clocks about 2,400 hours each year researching and documenting the 500-plus local cemeteries, though they only take their research into the cemeteries during the coldest winter months. Otherwise, they frequent the county courthouse, the Library of Virginia and the history room at Central Library to dig up genealogical information to aid them in their research.

"Our purpose is to research and document cemeteries and teach people about their importance," said Lipowicz, who spoke of the committee's work to a group of seniors at LaPrade Library earlier this month. "We look at deed work and genealogy to try to determine who is buried in those places. We look at wills. We also visit the cemeteries to count the graves and record the inscriptions, if indeed there are marked graves there."

Rachel Lipowicz, chairman of the Cemetery Committee with the Chesterfield Historical Society, takes a walk through the old cemetery at Mount Hermon Baptist Church in Chesterfield.

The committee pays no heed to commercial cemeteries, choosing to spend its time investigating churchyard, community, family and slave cemeteries. Lipowicz reports that Chesterfield boasts 24 churchyard cemeteries and around 10 community cemeteries, leaving the rest of the 500 graveyards as burial grounds for families and slaves.

Around 18 of those cemeteries are located within the boundaries of Pocahontas Park, according to Irene Frentz, a state park employee who serves as an advisor on natural and historical resources. Earlier this year, Frentz worked with Lipowicz and the historical society to document one such cemetery, the Gill-Dance cemetery, which could house as many as 46 graves. Their research resulted in a flyer, available in the park office and at the historical society, which documents the family behind the cemetery.

Cemeteries like this one yield valuable information for genealogical research and local history. One of the grave markers is for Emmett Branch, son of Daniel B. and Margaret Goode. He lived from October 11, 1858 to March 29, 1882.

"As you look around, you realize that every piece of ground that you're walking on has a history," she said. "If only they could speak, what stories they would tell."

The stories may remain hidden, but many of the concrete facts unearthed by the cemetery committee were published in a 1998 genealogically-oriented book, "Gone but Not Forgotten," which Lipowicz edited. But the committee, which meets weekly, is continuously making new discoveries.

"Cemeteries are on every sort of property in Chesterfield," said Lipowicz, who has chaired the committee since 1994. "You've got 'em next to schoolyards, in subdivisions, in shopping center parking lots - they're just all over the place…Every week we find a couple more."

Documenting the cemeteries can be a bit like a treasure hunt, whether the committee is trying to pinpoint the location of a reported graveyard or attempting to match an unmarked grave to its inhabitant. For the latter exercise, the volunteers often have to hit the library to research death certificates and obituaries.

"The whole work is very good for genealogical research," explained Lipowicz. "The death date is one of the hardest things for people to find in genealogical research. A lot of times that information doesn't exist, especially for black people and women. When you find this information, you can take that and find an obituary that tells about the life of the person and the family members and also leads you back to the cemetery where the person is interred and possibly find out more."

Though the work can be tedious, Lipowicz and her committee members find it enthralling.

"We are very compelled to do this research," said Lipowicz. "We just have to do it."

And though the Cemeteries Committee might get a kick out of its own research, the information benefits the community as a whole.

"If someone's tracing their family, and they want to know who their great grandfather or their great grandmother was, sometimes a cemetery is the only place you're going to find that information." said Lipowicz. "Plus, for me, cemeteries recall the people who settled Chesterfield and make us think about this past. You start to think: What was their life like?"