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.
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