Hundreds of historic graves found in abandoned cemetery near Ayden
A team of archeologists from East Carolina University has discovered hundreds of historic graves in an abandoned plot of land in Pitt County.
After years of neglect, the Town of Ayden’s lost cemetery is taking on a second life.
“It’s kind of been brought back to public knowledge,” ECU Anthropology Professor Charles Ewen said.
In 2020, Ayden Town Manager Matthew Livingston asked Ewen for a favor.
A teenager in the area wanted to build a trail through an unclaimed plot of land for his Eagle Scout project, and local legend had it that the land used to be a burial ground.
“They wanted to make sure they weren’t going to be crossing over any unmarked graves,” Ewen said. “I got out here and realized that was a very big project to do.”
Ewen turned the effort into a class project, leading his archeology students in restoring the headstones in the area and planting pink flags to note every unmarked grave they found.
“Over the last 25 years I’ve been at ECU, I’ve worked on a couple of dozen cemeteries of different size,” Ewen said. “This is probably the largest one that has been essentially abandoned.”
Through research, the students discovered the area was an historic African-American cemetery that was home to more than 400 graves.
The earliest dated back to 1903, meaning they could be the resting place of some people born into slavery.
“I was stunned, I think, to have something like this so close to the town limits,” Livingston said.
The town manager told WRAL News that he was working on restoring the area, setting up a historic marker and creating walking paths for people to pay their respects.
“It’s a part of the history of Ayden, so we want to do something positive with it,” Livingston said.
He is most interested in finding out who was buried in the land and making connections with their descendants who could be living just a few miles down the road.
“We definitely want the community involved as much as possible,” Livingston said. “Because it is a part of the community, and we don’t want it to be forgotten.”
The town manager said he hoped to have the cemetery’s historic marker posted within the next few months.
