The Old North Baptist Church is the oldest active missionary Baptist church in Texas. The church began in 1838 and is located four miles north of Nacogdoches.
Next to this church is the Old North Church Cemetery, established in 1836. The cemetery is split into two sections, one of which was dedicated to local slaves. Forgotten and abandoned for many years, the graves of the slaves were overgrown and crumbling. In 2018, Wyatt Ordway decided it was time to fix this problem. He began the long-running Old North Church Afro-American Cemetery Restoration Project.
Ordway leads the effort in restoring the graves, including the tedious process of cleaning and reconstructing the headstones.
Wyatt Ordway: Well, first we have to clean it. We clean all the lichen and the dirt and everything off of it. We make sure it’s level. And, if the base is not level, then of course we have to dig it up and level it. . And then that’s where we use this two-part epoxy. And, then they’re put together, and we use a brace system to hold them in place to make sure it’s level and straight and square. We start from the bottom up if there’s multiple pieces. Some of them are in five or six pieces, and so, you put one piece together at a time and make sure it’s sturdy. And, we seal. And that would be a finished stone.
Ordway says they have now restored 165 headstones. Some of the graves started off just dirty, and others were broken and weathered down.
Wyatt Ordway: We know that there’s plenty more out there that we haven’t discovered yet. And we probably never will discover all of them.
However, restoring the cemetery is about more than just cleaning and repairing headstones. Ordway also works with Nacogdoches locals to tell the stories of those buried. Because the cemetery is so old, there are graves as old as 160 years, and some are stories lost in time.
Wyatt Ordway: We didn’t know who it was or when they had died until we put it together and saw the engraving on it. She is actually the oldest. Her name is Olivia Johnston. She was buried in 1860. And we have no genealogy on her. We can’t find any information other than the stone itself. It’s engraved that she was the wife of Ray Johnston, and we can’t find anything on him either. We’re at a dead end as to who they are. There may be a typo-error. Maybe they read the death certificate wrong at the time. Maybe there was no death certificate, maybe it was just verbal.
Local hardware stores and citizens have donated all of the resources used, including gravel and cleaning supplies. Ordway credits the people who have helped him with the project as well. He and everyone else working on the cemetery are volunteers.
Wyatt Ordway: For a total, we’ve had over a thousand volunteers working. And, of course, the high school national honors society–those kids have done most of the work in the restoration portion. The churches were very involved in the clean out. But we’ve been teaching the kids how to restore, why we restore the way we do, and we teach them the history of the cemetery and who’s who and why they were important.
Wyatt Ordway says the work put into the cemetery over the years makes it something more than an abandoned grave site.
Wyatt Ordway: That’s where my heart is. We’re bringing this cemetery back to life, we’re making this cemetery mean something to somebody and not just a field that’s forgotten. And I think we’ve done a very good job. The community and the people who have helped have really, really come together and made this a meaningful place.
When asked how he feels after repairing and cleaning a grave, Ordway says he just feels joy.
Wyatt Ordway: Joy is the only word I can think of. We recently dug up a veteran’s stone from a gentleman who was in World War I and World War II. And the feeling–I was just overjoyed. You know, everybody just gathers around something we found or something we finished, or something that was broken, and now it’s not. There’s just a sense of joy, is the only word I can think of.
This is Alaina Atnip with Red River Radio.