BARRHEAD - The Barrhead Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, with the help of Barrhead and District Family Community Support Services (FCSS), is doing its part to protect the history of the Bethel Baptist Cemetery.
The cemetery is the final resting ground of more than a dozen residents of the black settlement at Campsie that existed from about 1909 to the 1940s.
The first burials in the cemetery were of Walter Smith, who died on Oct. 18, 1920, and Mr. and Mrs. Ed Smith's baby, who died the same year. (The name or gender of the infant, was not indicated) The final burial was Mr Edward Smith, who died in November 1948. In total, 13 residents of the former black settlement at Campsie were laid to rest at the cemetery before its decommissioning in 1950.
The church is raising the approximately $8,000 needed to buy and install new gravestones for the former residents of the settlement and the decommissioned cemetery. The church is about halfway to its goal thanks to a Feb. 16 presentation by Paul and Christine Beaver hosted by the Barrhead FCSS.
The Beaver siblings are the great-grandchildren of Hattie and Walker Beaver that settled in Campsie in the spring of 1908. The Barrhead FCSS is helping the church's fundraising efforts by acting as the bankers for the project, allowing the giving of tax receipts to those who donate.
Church member Bill Warwaryick said they got involved in 1997. By then, the cemetery, which is about 19 kilometres west of Barrhead on Highway 18 or 1.5 kilometres past the Highway 18 and Highway 763 intersection, had become completely overgrown.
So on July 26, several church members, along with their friends and family, held a brushing day, to clear as much of the overgrown vegetation as they could.
"I'm not sure who the kingpin was that got the ball rolling," he said but noted several church members lived near the site and/or were friends of the families of the original settlement settlers.
As the group slowly removed the overgrown vegetation, they started to uncover the individual graves.
"There were no gravestones or wooden markers," Warwaryick said, adding the only indication that there was a grave was the original funeral-home-style markers placed at the time of the person's burial.
"And they were no longer standing up. They were just lying flat on the ground."
The first markers they found were underneath old spruce trees, as there was no tall grass or other vegetation due to their needles on the ground.
However, the others were harder to find.
Warwaryick noted he found two of the markers underneath some rocks.
"We knew there were two graves we had not found when I saw these piles of rocks. And I wondered if someone had put them there to note where the graves were."
A few years later, the church decided to replace the original grave markers with something more permanent, an etched aluminium nameplate attached to a concrete slab. The new markers were placed by Arthur Gibbs of Campsie and Garold Adams of Pibroch, who knew members of the original black settlement.
Warwaryick noted it took some effort to decipher the names from the original grave markers as they were barely legible from the decades in the elements.
Unfortunately, he said, when the church members returned on Aug. 20, 2022, to do another cleanup of the cemetery, they found that the replacement gravemarkers were suffering the same weathering effect as the original markers, and the names were starting to fade.
So the church started to discuss the possibility of replacing the markers with stone markers.
Warwaryick then approached Rose City Memorials to get a quote on how much it would cost to install the new markers for the 13 graves and received the previously mentioned figure.
"(Rose City) was quite happy to help us and gave us a substantial discount," he said.
Warwaryick said there have been two large cleanup days where church members have gone to the Bethel Baptist Cemetery site to do what upkeep they could.
"It has become our church project, but it really isn't too organized," he said, adding if people want to help with the upkeep, all they have to do is go to the cemetery.
And as for how people can donate to the Bethel Baptist Cemetery stone marker fundraiser, they can contact Rhonda Waggoner at Barrhead FCSS for more information or drop by their office at 5103-51 Street.
Waggoner, who is also a member of the Barrhead Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, is also organizing another information session on the settlement at Campsie and the Bethel Baptist Cemetery, which will most likely be in mid-March.
Barry Kerton, TownandCountryToday.com
