04-11-2024 Howard Magazine - Flipbook - Page 36
sale of an apartment complex and parking lot
built on Bethesda’s Moses Macedonia African
Cemetery. A ruling is expected later this year.
The Scouts’ rediscovery of St. Mary’s sparked
a revitalization project being spearheaded
by Kelly Palich, an archeologist for Howard
County Department of Recreation & Parks.
The restoration will include cleaning up the
property and locating buried gravesites, and
Palich estimates the project will take five years.
She envisions paths, maps, directional signs and
historic markers, perhaps flowers.
“Cemeteries are often the only tangible
remains of the people buried there,” Palich said,
adding that few official documents remain of
enslaved people and other groups marginalized
during their lifetimes.
“Those records don’t exist,” she said.
“But their descendants are still around, and
cemeteries are a place for them to come and
remember their ancestors.”
It’s not entirely accurate to say that no
one knew about St. Mary’s before Hill and
Klementsen began their awareness-raising
campaign. But that knowledge was confined
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to a handful of genealogists and elderly residents
with long memories — and even they were
unclear about such critical details as who owned
the 3.2-acre plot tucked behind houses and out
of view in a residential neighborhood, and who
was responsible for maintaining it.
“I live in Turf Valley and I had no idea that
the cemetery existed,” Klementsen said. “This is
something that directly affects my community.”
Palich didn’t know that Howard County
owned St. Mary’s until the Scouts presented
her with the deeds.
“This revitalization wouldn’t have happened
without them, because I wouldn’t have known
this cemetery was there,” she said. “I sing Sarah’s
and Nadia’s praises every chance I get.”
The teens became involved in the fall of
2020 after Hill’s mother, Tracy Hill, attended
a presentation by the Howard County
Genealogical Society. Someone began talking
about the cemetery and its woeful state of
disrepair and suggested that the Boy Scouts
be recruited to clean it up.
Tracy Hill remembers thinking, “Girls can
do that, too.”
She mentioned the idea to her daughter
and her friend, Klementsen, who were then
in the eighth grade and searching for a project
for their Girl Scouts silver merit badge, which
requires 50 hours of community service. The
girls asked James Kuttler, who was in charge
of cemeteries for the genealogical society, to
show them the site.
“It was horrid,” Sarah Hill said.
“There was trash everywhere. We found
alcohol bottles. The gravestones were completely
covered with brush and debris. It had become
a place for teenagers to drink and knock over
headstones. We couldn’t even walk through it,
and we were both 13-year-old kids who loved
to play in the woods.”
The girls began photographing the site and
what graves they could find. They researched
deeds to identify who owned the cemetery and
read old newspaper archives.
They learned that between 1886 and 1933,
the cemetery served as a burial ground for
enslaved Black people and white, primarily Irish
laborers from three nearby Catholic parishes:
St. Mary’s, which is the name of the chapel