For more than\u00a0100 years, three cemeteries in\u00a0West Coconut Grove have been the final resting place for the men and women prominent in building\u00a0and leading\u00a0what had long been one of South Florida\u2019s\u00a0most vibrant\u00a0Black communities.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Among those buried in above-ground crypts are many of the city\u2019s original Bahamian settlers, including Ebenezer Woodbury Franklin Stirrup, a real estate developer, and his wife Charlotte Jane Stirrup, for whom one of the burial grounds is named.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But also interred beneath the live oaks and gumbo limbo trees are hundreds of West Grove residents whose names and legacies lie buried in unrecorded graves that are unmarked, painted over or so weathered by time that inscriptions have been worn away.<\/p>\n
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Headstones and vaulted graves stand among the oaks in one of West Grove\u2019s historic cemeteries, where generations of Bahamian settlers and their descendants are buried.<\/p>\n
(Patrick Farrell for The Spotlight)<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were surprised to learn that so many graves are unknown,\u201d said Paulette Culmer, speaking for herself and her twin sister Paula, both retired federal employees and lifelong Grove residents.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Culmers have several relatives buried in the cemeteries that share the Charles Avenue block in which they live. \u201cWe assumed that all would be documented by now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Enter Grove resident Lea Nickless, an artist and researcher who has been distributing a \u201ccall for participation,\u201d inviting the community to join her project centered on the West Grove\u2019s three historic cemeteries on three adjoining parcels between Charles and Franklin avenues at Douglas Road.<\/p>\n
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Lifelong Coconut Grove residents Paula and Paulette Culmer have several relatives buried in nearby cemeteries.<\/p>\n
(Amelia Orjuela Da Silva for The Miami Times)<\/p>\n
\u201cMy goal,\u201d writes Nickless, \u201cis to create a sustainable database that will preserve and honor the memory of these individuals. If you have family members buried in this cemetery, I would love to hear from you and to gather any stories or images you might be willing to share.\u201d<\/p>\n
The database Nickless aims to build would include \u201cnames, birth and death dates, places of birth, occupations and other details that tell the stories of their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
So far, she has documented 800 of somewhere over 1,000 buried in the Grove.<\/p>\n
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Military veterans, law enforcement officers and members of American Legion Post 182 gather in West Grove\u2019s Charlotte Jane Memorial Park Cemetery two weeks ago to mark Veteran\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n
(Mike Clary for the Spotlight)<\/p>\n
The Historic Coconut Grove Cemetery was first used as a graveyard for the Grove\u2019s Bahamian settlers in 1906, according to a historical marker erected by the Coconut Grove Cemetery Association.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe community\u2019s original cemetery was a small lot opened by the city in 1904 on what is now the 3500 block of Charles Avenue,\u201d reads the marker\u2019s citation. \u201cThat site was judged by the town leaders to be too small to accommodate the needs of the growing population and the cemetery was moved to its present location.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1913, the Stirrup family and four others purchased an adjacent property abutting Douglas Road. The price: $140.<\/p>\n
Over the years there have been attempts to compile a record of those buried in the Grove. In 1992, with a commission from the Coconut Grove Cemetery Association, Research Atlantica, Inc., conducted a field survey of the association-run cemetery and came up with a phone book-sized document that describes the location of every gravesite, with the names, dates and epitaphs of many.<\/p>\n
There are no family histories in the surveys, but some poignant stories can be gleaned nonetheless. Gracy G. Sampson, \u201cOur darling,\u201d lived for just five months before dying in July 1914. Sherman Harrison lived to be 80 before his burial in 1934 in a grave marked by an anthropomorphic headstone, shaped to resemble his head and shoulders \u2014 one of 12 such stones found only in Miami-Dade County.<\/p>\n
Yet the identities of many buried in the Grove remain a mystery.<\/p>\n
For the rapidly gentrifying West Grove, whose Black population is shrinking by the year, the cemeteries would seem to be a touchstone to the past, an inviolable anchor that could serve to bring former residents back to their hometown.<\/p>\n
Marvin Dunn, an emeritus professor at Florida International University and author of many books and studies of Florida\u2019s Black communities, cautions that the power of historic ties is not absolute.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen generations move away from where their ancestors are, they tend not to come back because of loss of the neighborhood itself,\u201d said Dunn. \u201cIt is not home to most; it\u2019s too strange, too new, has a different vibe.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, adds Dunn, that does not mean that the cemeteries are any less valuable.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to know who\u2019s there,\u201d he said. \u201cThe dead deserve it, whether they know it or not, they have rights. This is sacred ground, hallowed ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nickless said she approaches her project as both an artist and a historian.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She spent years of her childhood in England, where her family lived near the cemetery at Stoke Poges \u2014 the burial ground that inspired Thomas Gray\u2019s \u201cElegy Written in a Country Churchyard,\u201d published in 1751. \u201cI loved wandering in the graveyard,\u201d she said. \u201cFrom an early age I developed a fascination.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a peripatetic childhood as the daughter of a NBC News cameraman, Nickless settled in Miami in 1983 and began working as collections manager for Mitchell \u201cMicky\u201d Wolfson Jr., a businessman and founder of The Wolfsonian-Florida International University, a research center and museum in Miami Beach.<\/p>\n
Charles Smith, who goes by \u201cCharlie Bahama,\u201d hosts a Nassau-based YouTube talk show featuring celebrities, travel tips and contests.<\/p>\n
His family owned the Royal Poinciana Luncheonette and Beer Garden at 215 Grand Ave., and he is working on a documentary film focused on the contributions Bahamians made in South Florida. He applauds Nickless\u2019 work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this is going to be a wonderful project,\u201d says Smith, 60. \u201cBahamians were so tight back then. Everyone knew the stories. Just to document it all, so years from now, those of Bahamian heritage and others will know a little bit of the story. That\u2019s important information.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For more than\u00a0100 years, three cemeteries in\u00a0West Coconut Grove have been the final resting place for the men…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[36979,36970,36961,36964,36974,36966,36971,36980,36963,36959,36977,36968,36962,36976,36972,225,227,226,36960,36981,36967,36978,36975,36969,36973,36965,36958,5643],"class_list":{"0":"post-61294","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hialeah","8":"tag-bahamian-contributions-miami","9":"tag-bahamian-heritage-south-florida","10":"tag-bahamian-settlers-miami","11":"tag-black-miami-history","12":"tag-cemetery-database-project","13":"tag-cemetery-documentation-project","14":"tag-charles-avenue-miami","15":"tag-charlie-bahama","16":"tag-charlotte-jane-stirrup","17":"tag-coconut-grove-cemeteries","18":"tag-coconut-grove-cemetery-association","19":"tag-coconut-grove-community-history","20":"tag-ebenezer-stirrup","21":"tag-florida-cemetery-records","22":"tag-franklin-avenue-coconut-grove","23":"tag-hialeah","24":"tag-hialeah-headlines","25":"tag-hialeah-news","26":"tag-historic-coconut-grove-cemetery","27":"tag-historic-graves-miami","28":"tag-lea-nickless","29":"tag-marvin-dunn-fiu","30":"tag-miami-black-communities","31":"tag-miami-historic-preservation","32":"tag-unknown-graves-miami-dade","33":"tag-unmarked-graves-miami","34":"tag-west-coconut-grove","35":"tag-west-grove-gentrification"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}