Heritage Etched in Stone
Memorializing those contributors to the Underground Railroad buried at Woodland Cemetery.
Leader
Michelle Day
Location
6901 Woodland Avenue Cleveland, OH 44104
About the project
Woodland Cemetery was the first site in the City of Cleveland to become a member of the National Park Service Underground Railroad Network to Freedom by nominating Sara Lucy Bagby Johnson, Hiram Wilson, John Brown and Edward Wade. This has inspired us to do additional research of those residing in the cemetery who were part of the history of the Underground Railroad (UGRR). We have learned, while creating a cemetery tour guide of the Underground Railroad residents in Woodland Cemetery, that nine are in undocumented graves and the Vosburgh monument has toppled over and needs to be fixed.
Absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence. As with much of Black History being left out of textbooks, lack of headstones for LEADERS of the Underground Railroad means that people doing self-guided tours will never find these people, who sacrificed life and property to help Freedom Seekers. We want to correct this absence of headstones so graves can be documented and their stories will be told with our UGRR cemetery tour guides. We also seek donations to restore the George Vosburgh monument (he is one of only 2 Black leaders of the Underground Railroad with a memorial).
It is important to provide a physical remembrance to tell their stories to educate current and future visitors and tourists to this historic cemetery. Once their resting place can be found, the educational possibilities are limitless. History is in your own backyard Clevelanders.
The Steps
Once funding is received we will purchase the nine headstones and have the Vosburgh monument restored in time for us to plan Underground Railroad Tours to the public and organizations. It is disappointing to talk about the history of the UGRR and there is only a patch of grass. Lack of a physical presence of headstones can lead to absence of attention to their significance and sacrifices.
We also plan to add the information on the additional people we have discovered in our research to the data base at the National Park Service Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.
Why we‘re doing it
Woodland Cemetery was the first site in the City of Cleveland to become a member of the National Park Service Underground Railroad Network to Freedom by nominating Sara Lucy Bagby Johnson, Hiram Wilson, John Brown and Edward Wade. This has inspired us to do additional research of those residing in the cemetery who were part of the history of the Underground Railroad. We have learned, while creating a cemetery tour guide of the Underground Railroad residents in Woodland Cemetery, that nine are in undocumented graves and the Vosburgh monument has toppled over and needs fixed.
Being located in the Central neighborhood, we are educators. We document and preserve history in stone so others can share the history that exists in our own back yard. Over 85,000 residents of Woodland Cemetery are part of this city's past. Our focus at this time is those activists of the UGRR, who have no physical presence to document the past.