‘Could there be more?’: Hermitage residents wonder if more unmarked cemeteries are out there

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) - People who live near The Hermitage, the home of 7th President Andrew Jackson, are wondering if there are more unmarked cemeteries in their area after one for enslaved people was found at the property.

One man who lives nearby said he found an unidentified cemetery. WSMV confirmed the cemetery off of Flora Grove in Hermitage was once an unidentified cemetery site.

The man said the rocks gave it away.

James Greene, the senior archaeologist at TRC Companies, led the efforts to locate the cemetery for 28 enslaved people at The Hermitage and had located countless others.

“We look for signifiers like headstones, stones that would be associated with a cemetery,” Greene said.

Greene said the suspected cemetery near The Hermitage is probably one of many once unidentified cemeteries across Middle Tennessee.

“There are cemeteries that they may not have been affluent people,” Greene said. “They may not have any markers at all, but they are still there and now they’re overgrown. ”

He said when locating a cemetery, they look for rises on the landscape, as well as depressions in the ground that are in a linear pattern.

Greene estimates they locate about three to four cemeteries a year.

There are countless reasons for these types of cemeteries to pop up, Greene said.

“They could be associated with enslaved cemeteries. They could also be sharecroppers or indentured servants, or also likely the people that owned that land didn’t have the means to go off and bury their family members in an established cemetery and they would’ve just established their own cemeteries and their own family plots on their property.”

Greene says the work archaeologists do helps us better understand the historical context of the state and also allows us to reflect.

“If we can locate those it is a way of honoring the dead even though we may not know who they are,” Greene said.

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