When I first started writing this blog post, I didn’t know what to expect or how much I’d write. I just knew that I would be cracking my chest open and finally applying words to the head-spinning experiences of my summer. Well…Here I am sharing my summer with you in three parts:
My Thoughts, The Work I Did, and Where Am I Now?
I have found that curiosity tends to leave people discovering valuable things about themselves, others, and the world around them. I hope it leaves you with questions and the desire to find out.
Where Am I Now?
Part 3
The burden of the Black American historian is painful, birthing weariness and hope simultaneously.
A week and a half after I finished my internship at the plantations, I landed on the continent in Accra, Ghana. I spent the next 12 days living with my eyes wide open. I felt what freedom must feel like for the first time. It was kinda like being a kid again. That small period of innocence every Black child has before they have their first run in with racism. The relief of seeing mostly other Black and/or African folks after being the only one for the summer washed me anew. Truly, I felt like I came home.
W.E.B. DuBois, whose home [now museum] I was honored to visit in Accra, introduced this concept of double consciousness in his book, The Souls of Black Folk. Since learning about this idea in high school, it is a perspective that I carry with me and heavily identify with. DuBois defines the concept as Black people in America having to operate not only in how they perceive themselves but also with how others, specifically white people, perceive them as well. In Ghana, I lived solely as myself. I never once felt the internal pressure to present myself in any other way than as myself. My presence was not dangerous or the source of someone else’s perverted entertainment. I was welcomed, safe, genuine, and free.
Moments from my trip in Ghana
I enjoyed the flow of Ghana. The constant movement and energy navigating different spaces in Ghana was invigorating.
The Assin Manso Slave River and Cape Coast Slave Castle
Footage captured from my Ghana trip at the river and castle. One of the more heartbreaking aspects of this day is how water was used. I love being in and near water. It was difficult to process the horrors of these locations being so close to something that brings me peace.
As I finish my last semester of graduate school, I reflect on all that I have done to preserve our history here at PV and this summer in Brazoria County, and I find it hard to separate it from my more recent experiences in Ghana. I walked the path to the Assin Manso Ancestral Slave River for the Last Bath and stood in the dungeons in Cape Coast at the Slave Castle. Whatever emotions and ideas I had solely for my work done prior has been snatched and folded into a greater experience in Ghana that I will always be finding the words for.
I do know this: I have been gifted a through line. God answered a question I’ve had since childhood. I no longer have to wonder what our ancestors could have gone through. I’ve been to both sides, lived on both lands, laid eyes on both atrocities that our ancestors managed to survive. Do you understand how long they lived in chains? Multiple months walking to the river, who knows how long in the dungeons, more months on the seas to Turtle Island or the other islands. You have no idea the darkness that could taint our souls, yet and still we find reasons to smile, create, bless those who curse us, and laugh with joy. Resilience isn’t even the word for it. Although I would never wish my history on anyone else, I would choose this skin, this life, this bloodline over and over and over again.
In lieu of a conclusion [because my ruminations of this summer will never be complete], here’s where I want to focus: I hope I brought someone home. I spent my summer learning about and caring for the lives of indigenous and Black women [and men] who survived incomprehensibly unimaginable things and gave us their descendants to share their stories. I saw myself in the women I learned from. It honestly felt like I spent the summer talking with them, fighting for them, grieving for them and my own ancestors, and wanting them to know how amazingly important they are. Then for me to return to where our roots run the deepest. To stand barefoot and free in the waters and wash my feet with gratitude of their survival. For my hair and skin to thrive and glow like never before. To laugh loudly to tears, joke, dance, and sing with a divinely orchestrated tribe of a family. To gather, play spades, talk trash, and reflect over the journeys we’ve had. To know joy as my portion where their last moments only knew sorrow and pain, I am humbled at the notion of carrying their stories and mine home. It weighs on my soul to know that my trip to Ghana is the first time many bloodlines made it back to the land they only knew as home. It has been 400 plus years of living displaced, and it sparks these final questions in my mind:
How often do we fulfill the prophecies that persist in our lineage? Whose prayers were answered by my [our] return home?
Bringing Them Home
Part of the mural at the entrance to the Assin Manso Slave River Site entrance
When I first started writing this blog post, I didn’t know what to expect or how much I’d write. I just knew that I would be cracking my chest open and finally applying words to the head-spinning experiences of my summer. Well…Here I am sharing my summer with you in three parts:
My Thoughts, The Work I Did, and Where Am I Now?
I have found that curiosity tends to leave people discovering valuable things about themselves, others, and the world around them. I hope it leaves you with questions and the desire to find out.
The Work I Did
Part Deux
The burden of the Black American historian is painful, birthing weariness and hope simultaneously.
I had to start using post-it notes to keep up with the major information I was finding through my research.
I worked through many oral histories, researched plenty of information, and expanded family trees based on the dots I was able to connect. However, the oral histories of one specific descendant holds my heart, and I pray that her family’s history gets the light and recognition it deserves. Cora Faye Williams is the great granddaughter of Ellen (Maxey) and granddaughter of Henrietta Wines. Ellen is an enslaved indigenous woman, most likely from Virginia, and she was brought to Texas by the man who enslaved her, Elisha Maxey, in the mid to late 1830s. [For those who are shocked by this, please know that I was beyond belief to find out that indigenous folks were still being enslaved or sent to other southern states with looser or no laws for decades after the Native American Slave Trade ended.] They soon settled near the Patton Plantation where Elisha became an overseer, married a woman from a local well-to-do family, and started a family. Around the same time, Ellen gave birth to Henrietta and, possibly, one to two other children by Elisha as well. For a few years, Elisha would lease out Ellen and Henrietta to the Patton Plantation as slave labor. Up until Elisha’s death which coincided with Ellen and Henrietta’s emancipation in 1865, Ellen also held the task of taking care of Elisha’s white family as well as her own. After he died, his wife told Ellen that she and her kids needed to leave their property, and so they did. However, neither Ellen or Henrietta chose to leave the county they had come to know as home. Henrietta soon married Sandy Wines Sr. and began a family of her own near Patton Plantation.
Unfortunately, I was not able to find any further information for Ellen in my research, but I was able to find more information for Henrietta. About 40 years after emancipation, Cora Faye shared that she and her two sisters were brought back to Columbia by their father to come live with their grandmother, Henrietta. The girls’ mother had just passed away, and their dad needed to bring them back to his childhood home for support. Cora Faye, the oldest of the three, quickly became known for her quick wits and curiosity. So much so, that the town doctor asked Henrietta to let Cora Faye live with his family as he taught her to become a nurse. Henrietta refused because, understandably, she wanted to keep the girls together. The doctor pivoted and had new mothers ask for Cora Faye to come help in their postpartum recovery. As the community’s doctor, then, took Cora Faye under his wing and trained her to become a midwife, Cora Faye started to notice the differences in other families’ skin tones. Cora Faye started asking her grandmother why her family would look white, indigenous or Black, and other families would all look the same as white or Black. Henrietta was initially hesitant to share and somewhat discouraged by her brother’s outburst over Cora Faye’s curiosity. However, with some badgering and encouragement from other family members and her close white friends, Henrietta soon sat down and told Cora Faye about her life, and why their family looked so unique.
At this moment in this 1993 interview, Cora Faye (86 years old) is sharing how she learned about her grandmother history.
This gem is the research of Cary Cordova about the Enslaved People of Patton Plantation in Brazoria County, Texas
*deep breath in* Before I move on, let’s take a second. Hearing that Cora Faye’s grandmother’s friends and knitting posse were the older white women in the town struck me as…odd. Yes, Henrietta is an indigenous and white woman through parentage, yet her lived experiences align closely with the Black folk around her. Also, this is the early 1900s to 1930s in southeast Texas in a county that, at one point, had 63 plantations! I did not expect to learn how communal and familial Columbia (now, West and East Columbia) used to be, post-slavery. Even though, Black people in the community definitely had a “place”, racial tensions and issues were minimum in Cora Faye’s retellings. She shared that if the Black and white kids got into arguments or fights, the parents made them work it out. Families had understandings, and the KKK was not as prevalent in that area based on another community member’s oral history. The Hogg family was often spoken of treating the Black people who worked for them or were sharecroppers on their land with benevolence. Personally, I believe that there was a lack of overtly racial tension in the community because many a white man also had a black family or a black child or two running around, and it was well known… *deep breath out*
Anyways, there is still so much unknown about Ellen and Henrietta. This is the disservice done for many descendants of enslaved folks, and I believe this is why I made it my personal goal for the internship to unearth as much as I could about Ellen, Henrietta, and their family. Because the Patton family was intentional to keep payment records so therefore, the names of the people they enslaved, it gave me access to gems that are uncommon in Black American genealogical research. Their records combined with my research also showed me how diabolical the origination of Texas as a state was, as well as the “domestic” slave trading that persisted decades after it was no longer legal. Sound familiar? It is quite jarring to see middle aged emancipated folks on the 1870 and 1880 census records with their birthplace as Africa.
While learning about Cora Faye’s matriarchs, she also shared an anecdote about a cousin of hers which lined up with a similar story I read about another matriarch in the community. Both of these women, as young teens, were given by their white father and owner to other white men to be with and bear children for. With this information, I dug through other oral histories until I found one by the latter woman’s grandson. In it, he shared the truth I was seeking to find; the women, Anna and Mary Jeffrey, were sisters, and I later learned that their mother was from Africa. One sister, Mary, refused to stay with that man, and after the birth of her daughter, came back home and found life and love as she saw fit. The other sister, Anna, created a family out of her situation and cultivated a life for herself and her kids. As I reflected on all of their lives, it reminded me of Maya Angelou’s poem, “Caged Bird”.
Excerpt of “Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou
A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
Through sharing her family’s history, Cora Faye, living to 106 years of age, leapt on the back of the wind and carried the song of freedom that her grandmother, great grandmother, and cousins sang. By breathing life into Ellen, Henrietta, Mary, and Anna’s journeys, it kept them important. I felt blessed to be able to honor the lives of women who lived in and survived the Patton Plantation and Brazoria County. To add their lived experiences to what’s known about the lives of the enslaved women at the Patton Plantation. There is so much I learned and will forever carry with me. However, I still have a plethora of questions that will probably never be answered: What tribe was Ellen from? Where in Africa was Anna and Mary’s mother from? What was her name? Had Ellen grown up in slavery? Did she even know her family? After emancipation, what made these ladies stay? And the question I will spend the rest of my life seeking the answer for:
Picture of Anna Jeffrey
I found this possible picture of Anna Jeffrey while trying to piece together her and Mary’s family tree.
What traditions and rites were sacrificed in order for our ancestors’ bloodlines, like Ellen’s, Mary’s, and Anna’s, to survive?
Where Am I Now? – Part 3 will be published mid-October 2025.
When I first started writing this blog post, I didn’t know what to expect or how much I’d write. I just knew that I would be cracking my chest open and finally applying words to the head-spinning experiences of my summer. Well…Here I am sharing my summer with you in three parts:
My Thoughts, The Work I Did, and Where Am I Now?
I have found that curiosity tends to leave people discovering valuable things about themselves, others, and the world around them. I hope it leaves you with questions and the desire to find out.
My Thoughts
Part One
The burden of the Black American historian is painful, birthing weariness and hope simultaneously.
Every time I tell someone what I did at my internship this summer, I get the same reaction. It’s a mix of shock, intrigue, slight horror, sympathy, and maybe a sprinkle of respect. My summer internship is something I never thought I’d do, but I am, to some degree, not surprised that it happened.
This summer, I had the honor to be a Preservation Scholar Intern for the Friends of the Texas Historical Commission. I was tasked with transcribing the oral histories from the 1980s-1990s of the descendants of the enslaved and other community members. For two and a half months, I lived on site at the Levi Jordan Plantation and worked at the Varner-Hogg (Patton) Plantation in Brazoria County, Texas. The original goal of my project was to add to the very large catalog of oral history transcriptions. If I found something else that piqued my interest, I was allowed to look into it and possibly create a second project. That is exactly what I did. [A.N.: Moving forwards, I will only refer to the Varner Hogg Plantation as the Patton Plantation because that is the time period I will be writing about, and the legitimate name of the place when people were enslaved on that land.]
Land at Levi Jordan Plantation
Footage captured from my first day at the Levi Jordan Plantation. The objects you see in the second part of the video are two of the original sugar kettles used at their sugar mill during slavery.
This map of the “Antebellum Plantations of Brazoria County” is taken from Altor Platter, “Plantation Culture,” Ph.D dissertation, University of Houston, Texas, 1961.
Transcribing the histories humbled me and opened my mind to ways of living I had not allowed myself to give much thought. I thought I had a solid grasp on the complex experiences of enslaved Africans in America based on the books, research, museums, movies, and conversations I’ve learned from. However, there is nothing quite like hearing about an enslaved person’s life from a loved one’s lips. Within the first two weeks of my internship, it was as if my entire world had been shifted on its axis. Not only was I listening to the stories, but I was living, walking, and working on the same beautiful land where those arduous and complicated stories lived.
It all became a lot to process, and I know that I still have not mentally unpacked everything. All summer, I lived inside this quote from James Baldwin: “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time — and in one’s work.” Every weekend, I drove home to give myself some reprieve. I had to come home to my family and friends, to the familiar, to other loving Black faces, to what I inherently know as safety. At my internship, I was the only Black person at both sites which was a Catch-22 within itself. As a brilliant colleague of mine, Maya Ford, described it, “victims rarely go back to the place of their trauma”. So, I understood why I was the only one intentionally spending time on land that was cultivated to destroy people like me. Even in the Commission’s work at the sites to preserve and honor the history and lives of the enslaved and their living descendants, it is hard to be present on land that has been frozen in time.
Just as much as I learned and valued my internship, I questioned and found my rage ignited by the constant reminder of America’s failures from the restrictions placed by historically racist groupthink. I found it hard to accept yet saw the societal accuracy in how the ruins of a slave cabin and sugar mill are left exposed to nature and disobedient visitors while the Hogg family’s [Former Texas Governor, Jim Hogg’s, family owned a portion of the original plantation from 1901 to 1958 – sharecropping and oil boom years] furniture and art collection sits in a secure and climate-controlled warehouse. It bothers me that an entire subdivision backs up to the Patton Plantation on the side where most of the formerly enslaved and their descendants lived and worked. The only evidence of a slave burial site near the plantation exists in oral retellings, while Patton family members have a visible and standing memorial plot on the plantation. I was living in a blatant juxtaposition.
Do you know what it is like to see the most deprave parts of your cultural existence immortalized and on display in poor condition under the auspices of preserving and teaching history?
The Work I Did – Part 2 will be published early October 2025.
PVAMU graduate student Evelyn Todd, PVAMU Assistant Professor of History Dr. DeWayne Moore, descendant partner Bishop Pendleton, Descendant Committee Chairperson Pamela Morgan, PVAMU architecture major Zynitra Durham, and PVAMU undergraduate Kalayah Jammer
Through the process, the project hopes to tell more completely the story of the formerly enslaved, buried in the hallowed grounds, and the hardships they endured at the Alta Vista Plantation, where PVAMU stands today.
Historic
&
Abandoned
Unmarked graves in Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery
“This study will explore the African American-lived experience through participatory and archival research, digital humanities, oral history, geospatial data collection and analysis, and the creation of interactive and immersive maps in preparation for the 150th anniversary of PVAMU in 2026,” said Dr. DeWayne Moore, a U.S. and public history professor at PVAMU.
The project was inspired by former PVAMU President Ruth Simmons, who encouraged such studies ‘to affirm to our students that we are awake, that we are concerned for their future, and that we are the Prairie View of our lineage.’”
Dr. Moore said the project is a true community effort, comprising faculty, staff, students, administrators, experts and community members to carry out the research and disseminate the resulting information.
Dr. Moore’s students have conducted interviews with several descendants of those buried in the cemetery. and he hopes that this article will encourage other descendants to reach out and contribute to the project. Due to her strong kinship ties to the University, graduate student Evelyn Todd ’21 is working on the project.
“As a student, you always hear the stories about the cemetery in the back of campus. So, it was sad to find out this was it and watch it go downhill over the years,” said Todd, who is working towards her MBA.
“I wanted to do my part to not just preserve the cemetery but honor it. I’m also really big on learning our history because if we don’t know what we’ve done or where we’ve been, then we won’t know where we’re going.”
‘To Honor Those Who Came Before Us’
The Texas state historical marker for Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery
The Alta Vista Plantation, owned by Colonel Jared E. Kirby, became property of the State of Texas in 1876. Kirby’s widow, Helen Marr Swearingen Kirby, deeded the land for the establishment of PVAMU.
Moore said history portrays Kirby as a “benevolent” slaveholder. But that all changed in the summer of 2021 when a June 24, 1936, interview with the only living person known to have been enslaved at Alta Vista surfaced.
According to Moore, Frank Edd White, a graduate student at the University of Texas, interviewed “several of the formerly enslaved in Waller County” near the Hempstead-Bellville highway. Among the interviewees was Elizabeth Burney, who had been enslaved at Alta Vista.
“She had ‘seen negro men beaten until blood ran down their legs,’” said Moore, recounting White’s record of the interview with Burney.
“’Marster Jack,’ as she referred to Kirby, ‘was sho’ mean to his slaves,’ and Burney went on to testify that ‘their food was bad…and sometimes the beef was spoiled and had worms in it, but they were glad to get it and did not complain,’” continued Moore, reading from the Burney interview. “’Their clothes were very scanty at times…Their living quarters were small and overcrowded…There was a great deal of sickness among the slaves, and when they died, a hole was dug, and they were rolled in it and covered up.’”
Moore said the Burney interview offers some of the only information recorded about the burial practices for the enslaved at Alta Vista.
The military headstone of Luther Felder is one of the only marked grave in the cemetery.
Finding & Saying the Names
“The cemetery contains a few marked graves, but the names of the internments have proven as elusive as the names of the enslaved at Alta Vista,” he said.
Among those buried at Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery is Mattie Wyatt Wells, daughter of George W. Wyatt, one of several African American politicians who hailed from Waller County during the Reconstruction era.
“This cemetery contains not only the remains of enslaved men and women who once lived on the enslaved labor farm of Jared E. Kirby, but also the graves of military veterans, the formerly enslaved, and their descendants,” said Moore. “Moreover, this is an important historical site to the descendants of those interred in the cemetery as well as the larger community of Wyatt Chapel and Prairie View. We have an opportunity to invite a host of stakeholders to campus to take part in the research and memorialization process, which can help people reach a consensus about the past and feel more confident about the future.”
Students and alumni work on the pedestrian survey in fall 2023
Tradition with the Annual Slave Cemetery Trek
To connect students, faculty, and the community with the area’s history, an annual Slave Cemetery Trek was a traditional event at PVAMU that was started in the 1990s by Professor Howard Jones.
However, Moore says the Slave Cemetery Trek has been undertaken by visitors interested in the history of the institution and may become an annual tradition at PVAMU.
“In the past, professors in the Division of Social, Political, and Behavioral Sciences conducted the trek in the fall, including longtime history program director and chair of the Division of Social Sciences, Dr. Ronald Goodwin, whose blog at the Texas Institute for the Preservation of History and Culture is a must-read for anyone interested in connecting the past to the present at PVAMU.”
PVAMU students, professors, staff, community members, and descendants gather to conduct the pedestrian survey in late 2023
According to a web page dedicated to the history of Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery and the ongoing project, the annual Slave Cemetery Trek has garnered strong, emotional reactions from past students who have made the walk.
Some “complained about the distance while others backed away because of fear,” with one student later writing, “There needs to be an understanding that while we are here doing what we are doing, there were others who came before us that worked diligently to produce the opportunities that we have at the present time.”
How to Keep
Track of the Project
and How to Help
Pamela Morgan & Bishop Pendleton
Believed to cover approximately three to five acres, the Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery may hold more than 2,000 graves, said Moore. In the fall of 2023, his team walked the burial ground to conduct a pedestrian survey and identified almost 200 potential grave markers, using remote sensing to determine the size of the burial ground. “Community stakeholders and PVAMU students worked with archaeologists Dr. Nesta Anderson and Melanie Nichols of Legacy Cultural Resources, LLC, to conduct the pedestrian survey of the cemetery,” said Moore.
This past spring, Chet Walker of Archeo-Geophysical Associates, LLC, conducted a ground-penetrating radar, magnetometer, and LIDAR survey of the cemetery. “His team is still waiting on the official report from the various studies,” Moore explained.
Donna D. Carter, FAIA, president of Austin, Texas-based architecture firm Carter Design Associates, is also involved in the project as a preservation architect. Her team has worked on multiple historical preservation projects, and they are excited to be part of this one.
In the meantime, Moore and his team built a project website, the Digital PV Panther Project. His students update the blog regularly so everyone on campus and within the community can stay abreast of the latest project news.
In addition to the website, people can also visit the Instagram, X, and Facebook accounts of the Digital PV Panther Project for up-to-date information.
Responsible Public History Practice
“One of the main goals of the project is to demonstrate the value of transparency and responsible practice to public history,” said Moore. “By regularly blogging about our work and posting updates on social media, we hope to inspire a more community-engaged, participatory approach to historic preservation in Texas.”
A review of historical evidence, Moore said, requires a critical eye and a breadth of knowledge sharpened by an investigative spirit willing to look beyond the painted prejudices of the past.
“Primary source materials reflect the perspectives and biases of their authors, and they reflect the systems of power and racist ideologies of the periods in which they were written,” said Moore. “They commodify Black experiences and rarely acknowledge the humanity of enslaved people. The data-driven methods of historical inquiry have often rendered enslaved people nameless; thus, we intend to use qualitative and archival data collections to recover the names and life stories of enslaved people and their descendants.
“We seek to identify as many enslaved people by name as possible, and we intend to represent individual and collective experiences in a self-conscious, responsible frame,” Moore continued. “We plan to compile as much data as possible and employ textual analysis to read against the grain of dehumanizing archival perspectives, and we stand in solidarity with and support descendant communities in telling their own histories.”
Interested parties should email graduate student Evelyn Todd at etodd@pvamu.edu.
On March 31, 2024, archaeologists Dr. Chet Walker and Aundrea Thompson returned to the campus of Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) to complete their geophysical examinations of the historic burial ground of Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery.
This project is funded through the Summerlee Foundation.
Broken Trees in the Cemetery
Dr. Chet Walker came back to the cemetery following a massive storm that left several trees broken near the entrance to the cemetery.
The Bottom of the Tree
The top of this tree was broken off and laying on the ground
Storm Damage
Despite the storm damage, Dr. Walker managed to complete his magnetometer study of the cemetery.
The archaeologists
In the spring of 2006, Dr. Walker founded Archaeo-Geophysical Associates, LLC, an archaeological consulting firm specializing in geophysical prospection. Since that time, he has collected geophysical data on over 150 archaeological sites, now totaling much more than 1,539 Acres of Gradiometer, 115 Acres of Ground-Penetrating Radar, and 484 Acres of Electromagnetic Induction Meter.
Aundrea Thompson studied at the University of Wyoming, and she has worked as a forensic archaeologist on numerous projects in the past ten years. For more on one project, in which she located the remains of a World War II soldier and brought his remains back to the US for burial, please click HERE
Hauling their geophysical prospection equipment in a large pick-up truck around the country, Aundrea and Chet spent almost a week on campus conducting the cemetery surveys.
Not only did they push the ground-penetrating radar over the entire five acre field to determine the size of the burial ground, but they also used a drone to scan a 120 square mile area with LIDAR. Moreover, they pulled a magnetometer across the five-acre field to compile additional data.
Bishop Pendleton is a descendant of one of the individuals buried in the cemetery. He visited his ancestral burial ground during the magnetometer study.
Rev. Pendleton shared some information about his ancestry with us at the cemetery. We plan to conduct interviews with him and several other descendants as the next stage of the project.
The cemetery
The burial ground is associated with and named after an African American church founded in the 1890s by Reverend George W. Wyatt, a one-time school teacher and politician who represented Waller and Fort Bend Counties in the state legislature in the 1880s. Based on slave schedules, Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery might contain hundreds of graves of enslaved people, formerly enslaved people, and their descendants. It sits on the former slave labor plantation of Jared E. Kirby, who, in 1860, owned more enslaved people (159) than any other planter in Austin County. No one made a formal record of these burials, however, and the historic burial ground, which is located behind University Village Phase III, was over time abandoned, especially after 1961, with the establishment of nearby Prairie View Memorial Gardens. Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery contains only a handful of marked graves, but it holds forever close the remains of three United States military veterans.
Chet pulls a large magnetic gradiometer behind him. It’s a passive instrument that measures changes in the Earth’s magnetic field.
Magnetic Gradiometer
Chet and Aundrea have a large magnetic gradiometer, a passive instrument that measures changes in the Earth’s magnetic field.
Chet and Aundrea completed the data collection with the magnetometer. Now that all the data is collected, they will analyze the data from the GPR, LIDAR, and magnetometer and submit their findings to Dr. Nesta Anderson, of Legacy Cultural Resources, Inc., who will meet with Dr. Moore and Pamela Morgan, of the Wyatt Chapel Descendants Committee, to compare the results to the findings from the pedestrian survey.
Digital PV Panther Project John B. Coleman Library Room 111 Prairie View, Texas 77446
On March 12 and 13, 2024, Legacy Cultural Resources, Inc. invited ground penetrating radar specialists Dr. Chet Walker and Aundrea Thompson to visit the campus of Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) and conduct several geophysical examinations of the historic burial ground of Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery.
This project is funded through the Summerlee Foundation.
Aundrea Thompson, Dr. Chet Walker, and Dr. DeWayne Moore
Aundrea Thompson & Dr. Chet Walker met with project director and PVAMU Assistant Professor of History DeWayne Moore to learn more about the grant from the Summerlee Foundation.
Dr. Moore’s son, Noah, surveys the cemetery with students workers on the Digital PV Panther Project–Noah Jackson, Zynitra Durham, and Jaylynn Brantley
The archaeologists
In the spring of 2006, Dr. Walker founded Archaeo-Geophysical Associates, LLC, an archaeological consulting firm specializing in geophysical prospection. Since that time, he has collected geophysical data on over 150 archaeological sites, now totaling much more than 1,539 Acres of Gradiometer, 115 Acres of Ground-Penetrating Radar, and 484 Acres of Electromagnetic Induction Meter.
Aundrea Thompson studied at the University of Wyoming, and she has worked as a forensic archaeologist on numerous projects in the past ten years. For more on one project, in which she located the remains of a World War II soldier and brought his remains back to the US for burial, please click HERE
Hauling their geophysical prospection equipment in a large pick-up truck from Palestine, Texas, where they had been working at another archaeological site, Aundrea and Chet planned to spend two days on campus before driving to Magnolia, Texas to collaborate with the Houston Archaeological Society on a dig site.
At PVAMU, Chet and Aundrea planned to run the ground-penetrating radar over the entire five acre field to determine the size of the burial ground. In addition, they intended to scan the field with an electromagnetic induction meter as well as LIDAR [or Light Detection and Ranging], which is attached to a large drone and scans an estimated 120 acre area.
In this image, you can see how running the GPR looks on the grass. Making an imprint similar to that of a lawn mower, Chet and Aundrea covered the entire field, hoping to determine the size of the burial ground.
By scanning the entire field, the teams intends to use the data from GPR to corroborate data obtained during the pedestrian survey in October 2023. We hope to determine the locations of graves and the size of the burial ground.
The cemetery
The burial ground is associated with and named after an African American church founded in the 1890s by Reverend George W. Wyatt, a one-time school teacher and politician who represented Waller and Fort Bend Counties in the state legislature in the 1880s. Based on slave schedules, Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery might contain hundreds of graves of enslaved people, formerly enslaved people, and their descendants. It sits on the former slave labor plantation of Jared E. Kirby, who, in 1860, owned more enslaved people (159) than any other planter in Austin County. No one made a formal record of these burials, however, and the historic burial ground, which is located behind University Village Phase III, was over time abandoned, especially after 1961, with the establishment of nearby Prairie View Memorial Gardens. Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery contains only a handful of marked graves, but it holds forever close the remains of three United States military veterans.
LIDAR, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging, is a remote sensing method that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure ranges (variable distances) to the Earth.
Drone with LIDAR
Chet and Aundrea have several drones that can carry up to 22 pounds of equipment.
Pre-Set Navigation
With pre-set navigational controls, the drone flies back and forth in straight lines, capturing data about the contours of the earth over a 120 square mile area.
Chet and Aundrea completed the data collection using ground penetrating radar for the entire five acre field, and they obtained LIDAR data using the drone, but they plan to return later in March 2024 to complete data collection with the magnetometer. Once all the data is collected, they will analyze their findings independently and objectively, and they will submit their findings to Dr. Nesta Anderson, of Legacy Cultural Resources, Inc., who will meet with Dr. Moore and Pamela Morgan, of the Wyatt Chapel Descendants Committee, to compare the results to the findings from the pedestrian survey.
Digital PV Panther Project John B. Coleman Library Room 111 Prairie View, Texas 77446
On October 21, we met with the Legacy Cultural Resources, Inc. team at the Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery. We began the second phase of the cemetery study, where we conducted the Archaeological Pedestrian Survey.
The archaeologists led a team of student volunteers in an intensive pedestrian survey of the project area. We anticipated to cover 3-5 acres in size. Archaeologists worked with small groups of students, teaching them basic pedestrian survey techniques. After the pastor of the Wyatt Chapel Baptist Church prayed and blessed the team, the survey began.
As we marked and mapped out the gravesite, the archaeologists also worked with the students to record the Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery as an archaeological site. This will provide it with a state-registered trinomial. Students worked with archaeologists to record the burial ground in the field on a TexSite form. We plan to submit and contact the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (TARL) in Austin to obtain the trinomial.
The small groups walked the project area in transects spaced 30 meters (m) apart, looking for evidence of grave markers, grave tending artifacts, depressions, or other potential indicators of the presence of burials. After we marked these features with pin flags, the archaeologists taught participants how to map the burial site with a handheld Trimble GPS unit. Since we hoped to disturb the burial ground as little as possible, we did not collect any artifacts as part of the pedestrian survey. Instead, we photographed grave marker and grave tending artifacts in the field.
There were a few surprising finds during the survey. We were shocked to realize how large the gravesite was compared to the estimations. Students marked off graves along most of the fence lines. We also found grave tending materials around a tree closer to the front of the walking path than expected.
We also learned a new technique for determining burial spots. Using the pin flags, we were told to push them into the ground in areas we believed marked a grave. If the pin flag was restricted from going too far into the ground, that was used as a point of interest to where someone may have been buried. Using this method, we found areas in the cemetery where there appeared to be parallel rows of burials. This method also helped us find possible burial sites near a group of 3 trees. At these trees, students also found a large cluster of grave tending materials and grave borders, which tends to signify a family was buried there.
Based on reports in the early 2000s, this gravesite was unknowingly being used as a dumping ground. Once this was found out, the powers that be had the trash moved. However, the trash was bulldozed further back and to the right onto that land and fenced in. As we worked on the Pedestrian Survey, we could get a whiff of the trash behind the fence as we got closer to the fence or if the wind blew. The pastor of Wyatt Chapel Baptist Church and others from the community believe that cemetery extends to where the trash now sits.
Towards the end of the survey, Nesta Anderson and Melanie Nichols–of Legacy Cultural Resources, Inc–went over the fence and performed an examination of the trash pile. We plan to report our findings to the Texas Historical Commission, which will offer guidance on the removal of the trash. In doing this, it will help us to get written authorization from the THC to remove the garbage and survey that land as well.
The Digital PV Panther Project looks forward to receiving feedback from both Legacy Cultural Resources and the Texas Historical Commission in 2024!
Our mission at the Digital PV Panther Project is to eliminate historical silences through digital storytelling and prevent the erasure of African American history through historic preservation at PVAMU.
This map of Prairie View Memorial Park Cemetery was provided by Texas Cemetery Restoration, LLC.
We appreciate Dr. Jessica Ward, Assistant Professor of the Practice in the School of Architecture at PVAMU for sharing her research with the Digital PV Panther Project.
For more information, please contact:
Dr. Jessica Ward – 936-261-9800 – jaward@pvamu.edu
James “Rusty” Brenner – 214-686-0014 – rusty@texascemeteryrestoration.com
Daniel Kieninger – 214-476-8654 – dan@texascemeteryrestoration.com
As I came into the Library, I walked into room 111 and greeted my co-worker, Lindsay Boknight, and Dr. Moore. We talked about how we might need more space for the Digital PV Panther Project in the future, and we might need to expand our digital and historic preservation efforts. Dr. Moore explained that the E.B Evans Animal Industries Building, which has been vacant since 2009, might be a good candidate for a historic preservation grant, and we decided to investigate the structure a bit closer. We walked over to the building, and we managed to find a door open in front. Though we wanted to examine the inside of the building, we decided not to step inside the abandoned structure due to the potential hazards, but it was a fascinating sight nonetheless.
Lindsay Boknight and Zynitra Durham at the entrance to the E.B. Evans Animal Industries Building (Photo: T. DeWayne Moore, 2022)Zynitra Durham riding a horse (Photo: Makayla Moore 2022)
I clocked out early at 3:30 pm, and I rushed to my car. I had important plans with my best friend for my birthday. We planned to meet at a place about an hour away that offered horseback riding–an activity that coincidentally fit with my earlier tour of the Animal Industries Building. As I drove an hour to my destination, I was so excited to meet up that I had forgotten to lock the door to my apartment, but my friend called me an explained that she had locked it before she left, which was a relief. She also explained that she’d gotten lost due to the GPS trying to route her through a toll road. I calmly told her about the route I took to avoid the toll, and–after 10 minutes–she pulled up to the secluded area of the horseback riding place. Since she was running late, I had checked us both in at the counter and geared up with a fanny pack and helmet for safety. We took time to get acquainted with our 4-year-old female horse, Dancer, and we gathered with other riders so that our guides could explain the rules of riding.
Zynitra Durham riding a horse, while her friend takes a picture (Photo: Makayla Moore, 2022)
STAY at least 2 feet behind other horses and riders
KICK the side of the horse gently to move forward
PULL BACK to stop the horse
PULL LEFT to move the horse left
PULL RIGHT to move the horse right
PULL BACK to stop the horse from eating during the ride
SAY “POTTY BREAK” when your horse needs to urinate
Extra Information: Horses can defecate and walk at the same time, but they cannot urinate while carrying a rider (i.e. sitting on the animal’s kidney.) If you stand up and release tension off the kidney, however, horses can urinate.
HAVE FUN
As we finished the tour, we had the pleasure of feeding horses carrots before we left, but the fun did not stop there. Since neither of us had eaten all day, we stopped by SONIC to get drinks and food before we moved on to our last activity of the day. We decided to visit Range USA in Cypress, because we both wanted to shoot our first gun. The gun range attendant was named Cragie, and he informed us that we had to be at least 21 to shoot their handguns. We were bummed out, but he also explained that we only had to be 18 to shoot their assault rifles. So we picked up an M&P15-22 Sport and 50 rounds of ammunition. Cragie provided us with ear muffs and goggles, and he also showed us how to hold and use the rifle properly.
Zynitra Durham with her M&P15-22 Sport at the firing range (Video: Makayla Moore, 2022)
When we walked into the gun range, it was EXTREMELY noisy. We chose a cubical with a range poster, and we loaded the clip with 15 to 20 bullets. I carefully put the gun on my shoulder, spread my legs shoulder width, turned off the safety, and put my hand on the trigger. I shot 20 times into the orange man. It was a scary and exciting experience! I looked over my shoulder at Cragie was holding a double thumbs up. With the remaining ten bullets, we split them and shot five each to end off the day. We emptied the gun, removed the clip and put the gun on safety, and packed the gun. We went to Cragie to turn in the gun, and he congratulated us on shooting the gun and invited us back on Tuesday for ladies’ night for $17.
We drove home, and I tried opening the door to my apartment, but I could not get inside. My best friend had locked the bottom lock from the inside, and I was completely locked out. Thank God I had accidentally left the window to my room unlocked. I managed to remove the screen, carefully push the window open, and climb inside my room. I ran to the front door and opened it for my best friend, who was relieved to say the least. To end the night, we took our dogs out, cooked pasta with pork chops, and watched The Man From Toronto on Netflix.
The Abner A. Davis Memorial has existed in one form or another on “The Hill” in front of the George Ruble Woolfolk Building at Prairie View A&M University since his death in December 1927. As a student at PVAMU, I have taken many walks across campus to get from my room in University Village Phase 3 to my morning classes. Since I lived at the back of campus, I had to pass Mr. Davis and the fountain quite often. Though I passed his memorial on numerous occasions, I never really took the time to learn about the history of the memorial or the man. This blog post intends to shine a light on a “gentleman, clean sport, athlete and ideal student,” as one former teammate referred to him, as well as the history of historic preservation and memorialization at PVAMU.
The Abner A. Davis Memorial on “The Hill” at PVAMU (Photo: T. DeWayne Moore, 2022)
Abner A. Davis was a member of the varsity football team at Prairie View A&M University in 1927. The Panthers were especially good that year. In an October 15, 1927 issue of the student newspaper, one writer exclaimed: “Never before in all footballdom at the college did the Prairie View Panthers show better form and finer spirits than have been shown this season. Vigorous, springy, and full of grit and fighting determination, the Panthers will be greatly disappointing to everybody if they do not smash and stop every gridiron machine that confronts them.” To view the entire article, please click HERE
In a game against Texas College the following month, Davis went to make a tackle on the opposing team and was severely injured during the play. He was hit in his neck by the offensive player’s knee, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down. Since his injury came in the middle of an away game, the Panthers finished playing the game and carried Davis back to campus. It’s unclear whether or not the team was victorious.
The doctor who treated Davis from November 24 through December 5 stated that he suffered from “paralysis” stemming from the “fracture or displacement of the 3[rd] & 4th cervical vertebrae.” While the doctor confirmed his diagnosis with an X-ray, Davis underwent no surgery prior to his demise on December 5. According to his death certificate, Hempstead undertaker E.L. Watson removed his remains for burial to the city of Eagle Lake, Texas on December 8.
The death certificate of Abner A. Davis (Texas Department of State Health Services; Austin Texas, USA)
In his memoir, Down Memory Lane: The Story of Edward Bertram Evans, Sr. and the Early History of Prairie View A & M University, former university president and professor of veterinary science and medicine Edward Bertram Evans claims that the final remains of Abner Davis were laid to rest in his hometown of Spanish Camp, a small hamlet that sits an estimated ten miles outside of Wharton, Texas. Spanish Camp is located about 22 miles southeast of Eagle Rock. Indeed, the exact location of his grave remains the subject of debate. In a March 12, 2012 article in the Beaumont Times titled, “Where’s Abner?,” David Lisenby reported that the librarian at the Alma M. Carpenter Public Library in Sour Lake, Texas, who was on a mission to find the descendants of Davis, believed that he was buried somewhere in the town of Sour Lake near the city of Beaumont, Texas. Lisenby does not reveal the source of this information, and it directly contradicts the information on his death certificate.
Even though no one has ever found Abner Davis’s headstone, his classmates at PVAMU have memorialized his legacy in numerous ways over the years. In a 1933 issue of the Prairie View Panther, one author wrote a poem about the gridiron hero. To view the original poem, please click HERE
IN MEMORY OF ABNER DAVIS (P. U. Hero)
Sleep, 0 brave one, in glory’s field, Time to your name shall honor yield; The summer shall their blooms impart. To fade above each mold’ring heart And fading, mix their lustrous charms With dust that bore heroic arms.
In a January 1934 issue of the Prairie View Standard, one of his teammates L.C. Mosley penned a memoriam to Abner Davis, and he reveals that the first physical memorial to Davis came in the form of light. “The light in the center of the campus proper,” he explained, “is more than just a light to illuminate the path to the library. It represents the life of a gentleman, clean sport, athlete, and ideal student, Abner Davis, who was fatally injured in a Thanksgiving Day football game against Texas College in Tyler, 1927. The classes of ’29 and ’30 made it possible for this light to shine in its way as the living light of this football warrior had shone. The entire Alumni mourn with Henry Staton, A. J. Banks, M. C. Bates, S. Prince, L. C. Mosley, O. Mason, Jap Turner, G. Turner, J. J. Mark and Pop Singleton who started and finished the game that Abner started and could not finish.”
The demolition of Kirby Hall as well as “all wooden structures in the immediate campus area” in April 1934 (news about the razing of the slave mansion can be found in a newsletter HERE) provided an opportunity to install a new monument on “The Hill.” The teammates and classmates of Davis decided to replace the monument to slavery with a new symbol in the late 1930s.
A drinking fountain and memorial in honor of Abner A. Davis soon adorned the top of “The Hill,” and student organizations used the fountain as the site of many activities for the next four decades. In 1957, the Student Welfare Committee affirmed the need to beautify campus and spearheaded a “College Clean-Up Campaign involving both faculty and students in an effort to make Pantherland ideal.” Making the first step in this direction, the committee polished the Abner Davis Fountain and “put signs on the lawn asking students to use the sidewalks, thus avoiding making trails through the campus.” [For the entire article, please click HERE]
In 1961, PVAMU student Lois Moore noted that the center of the “campus is designated with a water fountain known as the Abner Davis water fountain. Many clubs and organizations meet periodically around this fountain…but many students on the campus do not know why these clubs meet here.” Moore also noted, “Although the fountain no longer exists as a water fountain, it is still the cultural center of the campus.” [For the entire article, please click HERE]
The light and drinking fountain that once stood on “The Hill” in honor of Abner Davis can be seen clearly in this 1940s photograph of the Woolfolk Building, (Photo: George Ruble Woolfolk Collection, John B. Coleman Library, PVAMU)
In March 1963, the LES BEAUX ARTS Cultural Club renovated the Abner Davis Memorial. The fountain, once stained and weather-worn, has now been refreshed for a new year. “This improvement has certainly played a great role in making the ‘center’ of the campus, all the more attractive, for our yearly high school visitors.” For more information, click HERE
On January 16, 1984, PVAMU observed the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. and organized a special program in the quadrangle area of the campus at the Abner Davis Fountain. For more information, click HERE
In July 1984, the Class of 1930 renovated the Abner A. Davis Monument and added the Texas Sunset Granite. For more information, click HERE
The Abner A. Davis Memorial on “The Hill” at PVAMU (Photo: Malachi McMahon, 2022)
The mystery about the location of Davis’ remains gives rise to many questions about the impact of racial segregation on his life and legacy. Being that his death occurred in the Jim Crow South, he would not have had access to quality medical care, and his death might very well have been prevented.
One day while walking across campus, I watched as landscapers blew freshly cut grass off the concrete walkway. It created a clean path for students. It was at this moment that I noticed the bust atop the Abner A. Davis Memorial was covered in spiderwebs, leaves, and dirt, and I started to wonder why no one on campus had taken the time to clean the statue. The grass is always freshly mowed and looks pristine. Indeed, the lawn on campus is cut and trimmed almost daily, and I rarely see any trash accumulation on the ground.
So I asked myself, “Why is the Davis memorial not well kept?”
The unsightly appearance of the Abner Davis Memorial was on my mind when I walked into work the next day for the Digital PV Panther Project, and I shared my concerns with Dr. Moore. I let him know about the condition of the memorial and that it wasn’t well-kept, and we agreed to take matters into our own hands and clean it up.
Polishing The Abner A. Davis Memorial on “The Hill” at PVAMU (Photo: Kalayah Jammer, 2022)
At the time, we did not know that we were following in the footsteps of many other students and faculty at PVAMU, who had been dissatisfied with existing preservation practices and made it a point to beautify the campus. Thus, we gathered some cleaning materials and headed for the memorial. We began by dusting off the spider webs, which had certainly built up for several years. Once we removed the spider webs, we sprayed the bust clean with water, and we cleaned it with D2 biological solution, an organic cleaning solution that removes fungi and provides a protective coating for the memorial. We also wiped the memorial clean from top to bottom with a soft-bristle brush. When we finished cleaning, I felt very accomplished and proud to have played a role in keeping the campus beautiful.
This job has given me a new perspective on what studying at PVAMU means. Many students, faculty, staff, and administrators have paved the way for us, and I believe other students should recognize that. If we are not careful, we will discount the sacrifices of the past. We must appreciate our history as an HBCU, and I will make strenuous efforts to share insights with my peers so that our heroes, such as Abner Davis, will never be forgotten.
Sincerely,
Malachi McMahon
This plaque was commissioned in the early 1980s. The classes of 1929 and 1930 added the Texas red granite to “The Hill,” which remained an important meeting site for decades. In 1992, students organized “PV 19 Day” at the Abner Davis memorial site to protest the indictment and arrest of students for attempting to vote in county elections. The memorial site proved an important site of remembrance during the tenure of PVAMU President Percy Pierre in the 1980s. (Photo: Malachi McMahon, 2022)
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![Nesta Anderson documenting unmarked graves with PVAMU students [Photo © T. DeWayne Moore, 2023]](https://pvpantherproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/thumbnail_IMG_2674.jpg "Nesta Anderson documenting unmarked graves with PVAMU students")
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![Nesta Anderson and Melanie Nichols explaining to students and alumni the process of recording unmarked burials in a cemetery [Photo © T. DeWayne Moore, 2023]](https://pvpantherproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/thumbnail_IMG_2655-422x316.jpg "Marking Graves")
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![The military headstone of Luther B. Felder over a year after cleaning with D2 biological solution [Photo © T. DeWayne Moore, 2023]](https://pvpantherproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/thumbnail_IMG_2658-640x853.jpg "Luther Felder headstone")
![The headstone of Milo Wilson Jr. after the initial cleaning with D2 biological solution [Photo © T. DeWayne Moore, 2023]](https://pvpantherproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/thumbnail_IMG_2657-640x853.jpg "thumbnail_IMG_2657")
![Melanie Nichols, Gregory Newton, Nesta Anderson, and Sabrina Francis record the last of the unmarked burials in the cemetery [Photo © T. DeWayne Moore, 2023]](https://pvpantherproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/thumbnail_IMG_2679.jpg "thumbnail_IMG_2679")
![Gregory Newton leans over to examine one of the many field stones uncovered in the cemetery [Photo © T. DeWayne Moore, 2023]](https://pvpantherproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/thumbnail_IMG_2654.jpg "thumbnail_IMG_2654")
