By Linda Charlton
Friday, February 7 is a big day for the community of Groveland, for that’s when the Oak Tree Union Colored Cemetery of Taylorville is being officially dedicated.
The 10 am cemetery dedication marks the final phase of the three-year restoration project, made possible by a half-million dollar grant from the State of Florida, another million in donated goods and services — and hundreds of volunteer hours. The ceremony is planned as an invitation-only basis due to space constraints and parking concerns. Planned participants include local dignitaries, the Florida National Guard Military Funeral Unit, the South Lake High School Navy Junior ROTC, plus family members of some of the army veterans buried there.
The history of the cemetery is in its name. Groveland was Taylorville before it became Groveland. It is the local black churches that kept records of who was being buried there, though many of those records are lost. The first official record of any black church in Groveland is of the Oak Hill Union Colored Church of Taylorville, ‘union’ meaning that Baptists and Methodists shared worship space. The ‘tree’ in Oak Tree is a reference to the giant oak tree that for years was how passers-by on State Road 19 could locate the cemetery, for there was no road or driveway leading in. The cemetery had become land-locked, abandoned, vandalized, overgrown — and partially over-planted in orange trees.
As archeologist Nigel Rudolph said on multiple occasions while on site, “It’s the worst I’ve ever seen.”
Talking about how the project began, city manager Mike Hein says “Ever since I’ve been here I’ve been hearing about it from different members of the community, including the late Councilman Griffin (Johnny Griffin). I knew there was a will in the community and there was a need, Waiting would do nothing but further the deterioration of the area.”
One day in a staff meeting Hein asked for a volunteer to head the restoration effort. Fire chief Kevin Carroll raised his hand.
‘I like history,” Carroll says. “I didn’t realize it would be this challenging, but it was worth it.
The cemetery is generally believed to have been established between 1895 and 1900, when veteran turpentine man E. E. Edge — plus a contingent of his trusted employees — came down from Georgia to set up shop in the Groveland area. As local historian Emma “Blue” Sullivan (recently deceased) said, “Edge started the cemetery for his employees.”
THE GENEALOGY HUNT
Figuring out who is buried in the cemetery has been a major task.
Valerie Perry of Ruskin has been a major player in the genealogy research for Oak Tree.
“I decided to offer my services for this project because it resembled one that I took on 30 years ago,” Perry said, some time back. “I was not familiar with the area or the history, but the task of identifying and documenting these forgotten souls was a challenge that I could not resist. This project will establish the resting place of many people whose fragmented history awaits that final piece of information. As a genealogist, I’m hoping it may fill in some gaps for their living descendants.”
The people buried in Oak Tree include pillars of the community, their families, businessmen, laborers, paupers, ex-slaves, WWl veterans, and some transients. Albert Stacey (A.S.) Blue is there. It’s his image that graces the official dedication poster. His claim to fame for local historians is that in the early 1920s, he walked to Tavares to petition the school board to open the county’s first school for African-American children, pledging $50 of his own money for the project. Jay Gould is there. Official records on Gould go back to 1905, when he was named as a witness in a murder trial. A few years later he married the widow of the murdered man. Liza Fobbs is in Oak Tree. Her 1926 death certificate gives an estimated age of 100, which in all likelihood makes her an ex-slave. Kid Oliver is there. He was a local mystery, even while alive. Cornelius Brodus (now deceased) recalls that “we didn’t know anything about him, We just called him ‘Kid.” One day he was found dead at a railroad siding.
A radar survey confirms 229 grave sites at Oak Tree, with the possibility of an additional 77. Some of the names of the dead will never be known.
Most of the graves are unmarked. Thomas Blue, Jr., age 90, does recall that funerals were basic. The ‘hearse’ was likely a flatbed truck, and bodies would sometimes be taken straight to the cemetery. Headstones were the exception, not the rule, as headstones cost money. Engraving the stones cost more, so a few people were buried under ‘anonymous’ stones. A couple of the older residents (now deceased) recall that a salesman came around a few times selling cypress grave markers, bragging that they would not rot.
Well, no trace of the cypress markers has been found. Realistically, those markers (plus the actual stone markers) would have been prime targets for destruction during the Groveland Four incident of 1949, when a gathering of KKK members reportedly camped out within sight of the cemetery.
Sam Griffin of Groveland is one of the few who visited the cemetery back in the 1950s, within 10 years of when the ‘new’ Groveland black cemetery had opened on Sampey Road. He can’t be sure, but he believes there were more headstones back then. Griffin’s father would sometimes take the young Griffin out to visit the grave of the elder Griffin’s brother, for whom young Sam was named.
Speaking of those early visits, Sam Griffin says “It was early ‘50s when my dad would sneak me out there. I was half scared when I was out there, and my dad didn’t feel comfortable about it either.”
The orange trees were planted on the outer portions of the 1 1/4 acre site. Thomas Blue recalls that was done in the 1940s.
