Remains discovered near Gadsden Cemetary to be reburied

A woman restoring a historic Gadsden cemetery says human bones that were found last week will be properly reburied.  Chari Bostick, who now owns the Southern Hills Cemetery just off South 6th Street, says the bones had been brought to her attention by the maintenance staff of Williamsburg Apartments next door. 

Bostick said when she was alerted to the bones. She bagged them up and called Etowah County Coroner Michael Head. Gadsden police also took a report.

Head says he took custody of the bones and will keep them until they can be properly reburied. He also said he'll keep a DNA sample from them in case they needed to be identified later.  Bostick says Wellman Funeral Home will assist in the reburial and that it will take place at the Southern Hills Cemetery.  Bostick says the cemetery was started in 1826 when a slave owner used it as a burial ground for his, then later other peoples' slaves.  The Etowah County Commission took it over and used it as a pauper's cemetery, until 1905, when the Woodliff family took it over. They apparently reliquenished control in the 1930s, although burials continued until as late as 1971.  Bostick took control two years ago, saying some of her own relatives are buried there.

She says among the people buried there, besides slaves, are veterans of the Civil, Spanish American, and Korean Wars, as well as World War I.

Others include some of Gadsden's earliest black business owners--including the founder of the city's first black-owned grocery store--and a black man who was lynched from the L & N Railroad Bridge in downtown Gadsden.

Bostick says she's trying to get a fence to surround the entire cemetery to hinder vandals. Already, tombstones have been knocked over through the cemetery, including a recent round knocked over by four-wheelers.