Students dig for cemetery’s ghosts

HARRISON - All that can be seen at Harrison’s first cemetery is a sign in a vacant lot and a few remnants of broken headstones scattered under a tree.

As far as anybody can tell, there’s no record of who is buried at Fick Cemetery.

Founded about 1866, Fick was full by 1879. Many of the bodies were moved from Fick to the new Rose Hill Cemetery so families could be kept together. But some remained at Fick Cemetery, according to historical anecdotes.

“There are still evidences that there are several occupied graves but no effort is being made to care for them,” wrote Mrs. J.L. Russell in a 1938 report prepared for The Twentieth Century Club, which worked to improve Harrison’s cemeteries.

Little changed in the next 75 years.

But now, six girls at Harrison Middle School are trying to solve some of the mysteries of Fick Cemetery. They’re sixth-grade students in John Henderson’s EAST class. EAST stands forEnvironmental and Spatial Technology, an initiative that uses technology as a catalyst for learning.

The students are Kamryn Boren, Ella Brandt, Isabel McNutt, Thea Norcross, Ella Kate Reynolds and Lindsey Ward.

If they can determine who some of the people are at Fick Cemetery, the Rotary Club has offered to put a monument in the lot with the names engraved, Henderson said. The club also plans to mark the grave sites.

The Twentieth Century Club put up the current sign at the city-owned lot in 1996.CLASS PROJECT

Henderson said he learned of Fick Cemetery last year and figured it would be a good project for his class. When Henderson’s students first heard about this year’s project, some of them were apprehensive, but they quickly got over it, Isabel said.

“It was kind of creepy,” she said. “We thought it was going to be hard, and it is hard.”

It may be hard work, but the students are enthusiastic, Henderson said.

“They run into class and don’t want to leave for lunch,” he said.

Doing such research will make the students more interested in their community and more inclined to stay there after they grow up, Henderson said.

On Monday, the students had a new piece of the puzzle: Russell’s 1938 report, which had been reprinted in the Harrison Daily Times in 1971. The article was discovered by Toinette Madison, director of the Boone County Heritage Museum.

Russell wrote that the 2-acre Fick Cemetery site was on land set aside about 1866 by former Union Army Capt. Henry W. Fick, one of the founders of Harrison. The spot was also known as Norman Hill. Fick later sold the city 10 acres about a mile to the east to be used as Rose Hill Cemetery. The first lot was purchased there in 1879, Russell wrote.

“As soon as Rose Hill was laid out, many of the bodies in the plot on Norman Hill were removed to the new location, leaving the latter as sort of a no-man’s land, as it is today,” Russell wrote in 1938.

Because Rose Hill Cemetery opened in 1879, Henderson believes any headstones at that cemetery with death dates earlier than 1879 were probably moved from Fick Cemetery. That could provide the researchers with names of people who had been buried at Fick.

Henderson’s students hit the computers, going through the record of burials at Rose Hill Cemetery found on the website findagrave.com.

BURIAL CUSTOMS

In the spring, researchers from the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville will use ground-penetrating radar to determine where some of the graves were, Henderson said.

One rumor is that Fick Cemetery was designated for former slaves, Henderson said. As the story goes, headstones were removed and used in construction of other buildings after race riots in 1905 and 1909 forced allbut one black resident from Boone County.

But David Zimmermann of Eureka Springs, a historian who has written about the race riots, doesn’t believe that.

“For one thing, it was pretty rare in the deep South for black and white people to be buried together,” he said.

In 1900, 115 of Harrison’s 1,501 residents were black, according to the U.S. Census. More than 100 years later, in 2010, 34 of Harrison’s 12,943 residents were black, according to the census.

Abby Burnett of Kingston, an expert on burial rituals in the Arkansas Ozarks, said it would have been unusual for black people in Boone County to have cut stones at that time. For one thing, cutstones would have been expensive, costing about $10 for a modest stone in the 1890s. That would be the equivalent of several hundred dollars today.

Most likely, field stones would have been placed onthe graves, but no carving would explain who was buried there, Burnett said. Field stones could have been reused in construction because their significance might not have been obvious.

“I think what people did is they were hoping someday to be able to afford a carved stone,” said Burnett.

Burnett is the author of Gone to the Grave: Burial Customs of the Arkansas Ozarks 1850 to 1950, which is to be published next fall by the University Press of Mississippi.

ONGOING RESEARCH

Henderson said he also plans to take his students to the Eureka Springs Historical Museum to research records from that city’s St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church. Harrison had an African Methodist Episcopal church until 1904, and its records were consolidated with those in Eureka Springs, he said.

The people buried at FickCemetery need to be treated with respect, regardless of their race, Henderson said.

Henderson said he has no idea how many people are buried there.

Henderson said some Harrison residents say they remember headstones marking the graves at Fick Cemetery. But others don’t.

Former Congressman John Paul Hammerschmidt said he lived across the street from Fick Cemetery when he was a boy, about 1936. He said there were no headstones or evidence at that time that it had been a cemetery.

“There was just a field when I was a little boy,” he said.

Henderson said overgrowth on the site might have disguised the headstones in the 1930s.

Henderson is asking anyone with information about Fick Cemetery to contact him if they can help. Names of ancestors who may have been buried there would be particularly helpful, he said.

“People are always doing genealogical research, so maybe people are looking for these ancestors,” he said.

Henderson said many records were lost when the Boone County courthouse burned in 1908.

Henderson can be reached by email at jhenderson@hps. k12.ar.us. The class’s progress can also be monitored on its Facebook page, which is under the name EAST classroom at Harrison Middle School.