Visitors come from Unon City

Cliff Fisher and Monique Bentley came hoping to help the museum prosper.

Locals come to museum from Presbyterian Church

Was so nice to get local visitors at the Museum today!
Visitors from Newnan Presbyterian Church on Greenville St.
Gave them the tour of the Museum and info about the Farmer Street Cemetery.
The largest SLAVE Cemetery in the South and could be the largest in the Nation,
if the City of Newnan would take the 2 acres back that the land owners have taken over the years.

The Museum has a facebook page, come and see what is going on.

https://www.facebook.com/Coweta-County-African-American-Heritage-Museum-140423942700115/timeline/

Or just search for "Coweta African American Museum" on facebook.

Link to the OLD 'thecowetacountymuseum blog".

http://thecowetacountymuseum.blogspot.com/

I lost the password to the old site and have been trying to move the posts to this new one, but have decided just to link the old blog to this one and hopefully people will look at the old one and new one.

Getting Chalk Level on the National Historic Register

Hey people, we are half the way to getting Chalk Level Neighbood on the National Historic Register. Mr. Lee has taken on the task not completed by someone else. I spent several hours with him last week telling him more of the history he did not know about Pinson Street and surrounding areas. Pray that the HPD will accept the prepared 1st step so we can go on with the rest of the proposal.

Berry Plantation Cemetery

When the Genealogical Society prepared the Coweta County Cemetery Book in the 1980's, they only knew of one grave in the cemetery. They called it the Cole Street Cemetery because no one came forward with any other information. Cynthia Rosers put some questions on the internet and we now have more info on the Burch Family.


Background on Burch family

Abner Robert Burch was born in March 1848 in Virginia. He was possibly the slave of Robert Simms Burch who lived in Coweta County in 1835. Robert. Burch is shown in the 1859 census as owning 19 slaves and in 1855 had 25. He was a lawyer and lived in Newnan, the 5th District.

Eliza E. Smith Burch was born in February 1848 in Georgia, the daughter of George and Isabella Smith. It is possible they were slaves of Dr. Ira Smith, an early Coweta County settler from Virginia who, in 1850, owned 54 slaves. George and Isabella had five children; Eliza, Ira, Walter, Fannie and Georgia.

Abner and Eliza were married in April 1866. Charlie was the second son of Abner and Eliza. According to the 1870 Census, their eldest son, George, was born in 1867. In the 1880 Census he was listed as being a railroad postal clerk. He went to Atlanta University and married Elizabeth Cox in 1893. They lived in Fulton County. Abner and Eliza raised a second child, Wilburn (Bud) Gay. In the Census of 1870, Abner was listed as a cook and Eliza as a housekeeper. In 1887 Abner established a restaurant on E. Broad Street. He later gave Bud an interest in the restaurant and it became one of Newnan's most popular eating places well into the 1930's.

Abner and Eliza owned a large piece of property between Savannah and Burch Streets in the Chalk Level community of Newnan. The house faced Burch Street and, at one time, there was a road from Burch Street to the cemetery. Abner and Eliza were respected and prominent citizens in Newnan having large property holdings and being committed church members and contributors or the community. There is no record of either Abner or Eliza's death or place of burial. A deed dated 1911 shows George to be A. R. Burch's sole heir and family history relates that Eliza died shortly after Abner.

Slave Cemetery Discovered in South

By Oliver Yates Libaw
Oct. 25
The solitary headstone of 3-month-old Charlie Burch was the only visible evidence hinting at a burial ground for more than 200 slaves hidden beneath a poison ivy-covered field on a hill in Newnan, Ga.

And it might have stayed that way if a group of African-American women and a society that takes its name from a Confederate Army hero hadn’t united to save the site when local officials proposed putting a recreational path through the field.

Prompted by the groups and encouraged by residents’ memories of the burial ground, archaeologists and researchers moved in and now believe the site is the largest known slave cemetery in the South. Shaded by trees, the hill in a residential district is now dotted with surveying markers and 249 orange flags identifying the likely locations of bodies buried in the field. “A lot people have always known about it,” says Ellen Ehrenhard, an archaeologist and director of the local historical society. But she said it took the city’s plan to build a network of walking trails, including one that would have passed through the cemetery field, to galvanize the groups to action. City officials have now shelved the plans.

“We want the young people here to grow up with a sense of pride in their community and in their culture, be they black or white,” said Diane Webb.

Webb is a member of the Order of Robert E. Lee, the ladies’ auxiliary group of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a Southern heritage organization that holds that Confederate leaders fought to preserve “liberty and freedom” in the Civil War.

They are working with a local African-American women’s heritage group, and other organizations to preserve the site

“We’re all here together. We’re one community,” Webb stressed.

Cotton Boom Boosted Population During the 19th century, Newnan’s population was roughly 50 percent black, as the booming cotton trade increased the demand for labor. An 1828 map shows the burial grounds were adjacent to property owned by slaveowner Andrew Berry.

The grounds most likely became a cemetery for slaves working in houses and businesses, Ehrenhard believes. The graves are arranged in clusters, perhaps indicating family groups.

Bob Olmstead, a local resident who has long believed the site was a slave cemetery, led the push to preserve the site.

“There has been no black history in Newnan until now,” said Olmstead, who is white.

Olmstead hopes the site will eventually become one of the 72,000 sites listed with the National Register, and preserved as a piece of Southern history.

Slaves were commonly buried in simple pine boxes or shrouds on the plantations of their owners, said Josh Rothman, a history professor at the University of Alabama. They were often identified only by wooden markers or stones, and careful records were seldom kept.

In 1991, some 420 skeletons of slaves were found in New York City, the largest such cemetery known.

Archaeologists at the University of Tuscaloosa have agreed to exhume two graves at the Newnan cemetery and perform DNA tests to determine the origins of the remains.

Alan Wang of ABCNEWS affiliate WSB in Atlanta contributed to this report.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=95256&page=1

(The site didn't tell what year and it was before my time (I started volunteering in May 2003) Dianne Wood

Relatives of Charlie Burch visit Museum again

Burch relative visits museum again today. Beverly Franks, the great great neice of Charlie Burch (the only person of 250 in the Farmer St Cemetery who has a tombstone)comes down from Atlanta to check on the Farmer Street Cemetery.
She enjoyed a tour of the museum and told me more information about the family history. She came down five years ago to talk to Cynthia Rosers about the family. I had already read the research began by Helen Bowles but had not delved into the family history of the Burch and Cox families.
Will keep you updated when I finish reading the large file.

From Philly and back, Ancestors abound

Bernice Nicholson Crumbley grew up in South Carolina but ended up in Phily. Her father Garlington Nicholson born 1891 married Leila Adams. We found Garlington's World War One Draft Card Registration online. We also found him with his parents Hill (1870) and wife Mollie (1873) on the 1900, 1910 and 1920 Census for Edgefield County SC Census'. Then we found Hill on the 1880 Edgefield Co Census with his mother Nancy born about 1840. Mrs. Bernice was so excited to find information about her great grandparents.

Leila Adams' parents were Prince (1871) and Clara Stevens Childs (1864) on the 1900 Edgefield Co Census. Clara was born a Stevens but we could not find anymore info on her.

Then we went on to her husbands side of the family tree. Bernice married Joseph (1924)Crumbley in 1946. His parents were in Phily in 1930: Jackson (1903 Georgia) and Lenora (1906)Blount Crumbley. Jackson was one of the youngest children of Porter Crumbley and Savannah both born about 1860 in Burke County Georgia. Unfortunately Porter was a farm hand in the house of Rins Johnson in 1870 so we may never know his parents because he was not living with them. Bernice says there are not many "older generation" folks left to ask, maybe none. There was an Edward Crumley in the same county in 1870, was Edward who was born about 1820 his father, is he the son of two slaves or was Porter not born in Georgia as he stated on five different census'?

If you have any info on any of these families please email me or leave a message here.

Visitors from New Jersey research family history

Melissa Barnes and her son Jarret Brown come to Coweta for the Meriwether-Harmon Family Reunion. Cousin Celeste Ann Harmon Ogletree brought them to the Museum so they could both find more information on their family for the reunion.

Their family ties include Harmon, Meriwether, Johnson, Orr, Barnes, Geter, Prather, Thomas, Newson, Hill and Burkes.

If anyone also ties to these families please email or call me so I can help you tie into them.

"Jarett was so proud of his 'new' Museum T-shirt that he wore it for a few days!