Pleasant Grove Chavis Cemetery Update with a Tombstone Demo Repair Event

The Chavis Family portion of the Pleasant Grove UMC Cemetery featured in our most recent newsletter (page 3), is currently undergoing clean up and preservation by church volunteers.

The clean up effort is largely complete. The volunteer group is moving on to preservation. Interested members of the public are invited to a tombstone repair demonstration conducted by Doug Compton with the NC African American Cemeteries Network.

When: Saturday, July 18, at 10 am

Where: Pleasant Grove UMC, 4415 Pleasant Grove Church Road, Raleigh, NC 27613

What: Live Tombstone Repair Demonstration

Who: Doug Compton, the NC African American Cemeteries Network

Details from the Pleasant Grove UMC Church Newsletter below:

There’s no “A” in Cemetery

An historic cemetery like the one at Pleasant Grove UMC offers clues and links to the past beyond what can be read on tombstones. Doug Compton with the NC African American Cemeteries Network has learned to follow the clues left over the decades by groundskeepers and boy scouts.

Come see for yourself. All are invited to come to the wooded section of the cemetery on Saturday, July 18, at 10 am, to watch Doug repair both the Richard and Rhoda Chavis tombstones. He will discuss what is involved in reviving and maintaining an historic cemetery.

The past presents challenges. For example, once the overgrown vines were removed from the archway to the wooded section, the sign added by the boy scouts in 1994 revealed a misspelled word. There’s no “a” in cemetery. “They didn’t give merit badges for spelling,” noted a scout’s parent recently. But a 30-year-old sign is historic, Doug says, and offers a challenge to us about how to use it today and recognize the good intentions of the scouts, while replacing it with a more appropriate sign.

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