The search for our ancestors gravesites is not always a simple matter. For those who have African ancestors who where brought to America as slaves in the South, there is a chance that they where buried on the plantations where they labored. Often without the benefit of grave markers. A majority of the time slaves where buried separate from the white families they served in the surrounding woodland or fields.
In the North during the colonial period those African American ancestors that where slaves may have been buried in known graveyards with simple things written on their stones, sometimes a date of death or their first name and "Servant of..." This was another way of saying slave. Wording might be
"Josh Mills
Servant"
or
"Josh
Servant of
Milo Mills."
There where free African Americans living in the New England states back during the colonial period. These people most often would have been buried in separate graveyards from those of the white colonials.
Fairview and Mount Hope Cemetery in Dorchester, Suffolk Co., [Boston] MA two of these burial grounds where started for this reason.
There several notable African Americans are buried in Mount Hope including Roland Hayes, the first commercially successful Black American Classical singer.
Find A Grave Memorial# 27654832
www.findagrave.com
Now an interesting find is at Forest Hills Cemetery. Local historian, Anthony Sammarco, says that buried there are European and African Americans along with other minorities and immigrant ancestors. He says it is an intigrated burial ground - the only limitation was the family's ability to afford burial there. [Economics is still a point of separation, even in death.]
Elma Lewis [shown above] is buried there. 1921 to 2004
She was an Arts Educator and "...In 1950 she founded the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts in Roxbury, which taught art, music, drama, costume and dance to the youth of Boston's African-American community for the next forty years."
[Find A Grave Memorial# 8233700]
In many parts of America there are separate burial grounds for our immigrant ancestors. Either because they where not included in the mainstream of society or because they chose to be buried separately to preserve their cultural burial practices from "The Old Country". Often these groups bought land and developed their own burial grounds.
From the Jewish Cemetery Association of Massachusetts site, "...first Jewish cemetery in Massachusetts, Temple Ohabei Shalom Cemetery, founded in 1843. Located in East Boston and home to the largest Jewish population in turn-of-the-century New England."
http://www.jcam.org/Pages/Foundation/foundation_home.htm
This might be the place to look for your Jewish ancestors who settled in Boston.
There are other graveyards that where set up for specific groups, often by those groups. On the west coast of the US, Asian immigrants where not always welcomed with open arms [especially the Chinese] even though they where a major part of the development of the industrial west.
San Francisco was the arrival point for many of our Asian immigrant ancestors who came to work in the gold fields and on the railroads. Many of them died here in the US and their bones did not make it back to China. [There's a disproportionate number of Chinese people buried in Boot Hill in Tombstone, AZ of all places!].
In San Francisco there are many immigrant burial sites:
http://www.sfgenealogy.com/sf/history/hcmidx.htm
In Texas there was a group of immigrant Germans who where against slavery during the time Texas was Confederate. There was, and still is, a large Jewish population that settled in Texas.
Could your ancestors be in one of these many nation-of-origin specific cemeteries in the US?
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