Historic Mansfield cemeteries seek unmarked graves

By Amanda Rogers

Mansfield Record

For more than 150 years, Mansfield residents have been burying their dead in the Mansfield Cemetery and the adjacent Mansfield Community Cemetery. But the cemetery associations that care for the historic properties don’t know who all of their residents are – or where they are.

“There are a ton of unmarked graves out there,” said Paula McKay, president of the Mansfield Cemetery Association. “I have uncovered several myself while trying to sell a family a plot. There were four unmarked graves in a row.

“We found several Civil War-era markers in the creek,” she said, “which makes me think the graves are there.”

Managers for the Mansfield Community Cemetery think that they have unmarked graves, too.

“We believe off back in the wooded area there are some graves,” said Michael Mainer, business administrator for Bethlehem Baptist Church, which manages the community cemetery.

“I have heard the rumor about a mass grave, but there’s no proof,” Mainer said. “I’ve heard all the stories. Unfortunately, none of us were around so none of us know what is accurate.”

The cemeteries want to dig into the past and find out how many graves are unmarked, and where they are.

In June, the Mansfield Cemetery Association began raising funds for a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) survey that would scan the ground without disturbing any of the graves. The cost for the survey for the 11 acres that includes both cemeteries is $29,500, McKay said. So far, they have raised $11,000 with restaurant fund-raisers, t-shirt sales and donations.

Findagrave.com has records for 4,409 gravesites in the Mansfield Cemetery, and another 289 in the Mansfield Community Cemetery. But, as McKay points out, that is for marked graves.

The first recorded burial was for Julia Man, wife of Ralph S. Man, co-founder of Mansfield, in 1868. Her 4-year-old daughter, Julia Alice Man, was buried next to her in 1872. In 1874, Ralph Man conveyed 2.7 acres of his property, including the graves, to the Cumberland Presbyterian Church for a cemetery.

The first known grave in the adjacent Mansfield Community Cemetery was of 14-year-old Milton Wyatt, who was buried in 1874.

“That’s the earliest legible marked burial (in the Community Cemetery),” said Raymond Meeks, a local attorney and director of the Mansfield Cemetery Association.

The cemeteries, which were divided by a fence for years, were also divided by race, with the Mansfield Cemetery for white residents and the “Colored Cemetery,” now known as the Mansfield Community Cemetery, for Black residents.

“When it was just families that had plots, they just went out and picked a spot,” McKay said. “Then the funeral home managed it. So many people kept records and so many didn’t.”

Over time, some headstones have been damaged, lost, vandalized or overgrown. Temporary markers have been lost or washed away.

“A lot of places have a rock, which makes me think there’s a grave there,” McKay said. “In the 1990s, there were a hundred damaged by teenagers. In the 2000s, they tried to steal all the granite vases off the nice headstones and the concrete benches. They had them stacked up by the road, like someone was going to come through with a trailer and steal them.”

In 2010, Boy Scout Alonzo Pone from Troop 1703 made cleaning up the Mansfield Community Cemetery his Eagle Project, and dozens of graves were found, hidden by brush that had encroached on the cemetery.

“Traditionally, families took care of the graves,” Meeks said. “A cemetery was like a park. People would go have picnics and pull weeds on their family graves. There started being organized efforts for maintenance.”

The Mansfield Cemetery Auxiliary was incorporated in the 1970s, then transitioned to the Mansfield Cemetery Association in 2001. The Mansfield Community Cemetery has been managed by Bethlehem Baptist Church since 2010.

Both cemeteries are hesitant to sell plots or bury people in the older sections of their cemeteries, because they don’t know where people are buried.

“When we took over the cemetery, we informed everyone that we are only looking at the front area because we don’t know what is in the back of the cemetery,” Mainer said.

McKay agreed, saying that the Mansfield Cemetery focuses on selling lots on the newer east side.

She said she hopes the association can raise the funds by the new year so they can get the GPR survey done. The cemetery also plans to add an iron arch into the older side of the cemetery that will be more appropriate for the historic cemetery than the current cement sign that was added in 1989.

If any unmarked graves are found by the survey, they will be marked, McKay said.

“We will have to come up with some kind of permanent marker,” she said. “It will be an unknown soul.”

To donate to the survey, send funds to Mansfield Cemetery Association, P.O. Box 1501, Mansfield, TX 76063. Mark donations for the GPR Survey. For more information about the Mansfield Cemetery, click here.

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