BURIAL GROUND SIGN PLACEMENT COMPLETES LONG PROJECT
The combined efforts of the City of Little Falls and the Little Falls Historical Society over a ten-year period culminated in a Thursday August 7th well-attended sign dedication ceremony at the African American Burial Ground section of Church Street Cemetery.
The sign dedication portion of the program was later followedby a thirty-minute tour of a number of significant cemetery graves.
The program included a welcome and introduction, followed by an explanation of the background leading to the sign dedication, and then the reading of the eighty names of individuals buried in this long-forgotten portion of Church Street Cemetery. Mayor Deborah Kaufman next accepted the Historical Society-financed sign on behalf of the City of Little Falls.
In 2013, now deceased City Historian Edwin Vogt approached the local Historical Society requesting assistance in somehow officially recognizing the African American Burial Ground section of Church Street Cemetery. The Society made arrangements with Enea Family Funeral Home and Burdick Enea Memorials to purchase a tree stump shaped granite gravestone.
Vogt wrote the narrative to be inscribed on the monument which reads: “In memory of those early African Americans who were discriminated against in both life and death. Denied equality, few gravestones exist in this section referred to as “Colored Burial Ground.” It is for us, the living, to rectify this wrong by granting this tribute of remembrance and respect.”
On Sunday August 16, 2015, the monument was officially dedicated in a special ceremony during which then Mayor Robert Peters officially accepted the monument on behalf of the City of Little Falls.
The project’s next phase involved the 2023 purchase and placement of four granite cornerstone markers, each inscribed with a broken chain to signify release from slavery. Daniel Enea assisted the Historical Society with this purchase.
The final phase of the project involved extensive research of City records to best establish who was buried in the African American Burial Ground. The decision was then made to create and place a sign listing the names of these eighty individuals. It is that sign that was dedicated during the August 7th program.Historical Society members next conducted a tour of ten Church Street Cemetery gravesites.
The individual grave sites that comprised the cemetery tour portion of the program were: Rebecca Batteson, Dean Miller, Cornelia and Enoch Moore, Cecelia Johnson, Charles Peterson, Nathanial Benton, the Gilbert Mausoleum, Homer P. Snyder, Johann Frederiksen, and Peewaush. A planned for Potter’s Field monument was also discussed.
The Little Falls Historical Society wishes to thank the following individuals for their assistance during this long-running project.This list of individuals include city engineer Chet Szymanski, Church Street Cemetery caretaker Justin Ostasz, DPW foreman John Sullivan and other DPW workers, Harry Enea, Kevin Enea, Daniel Enea, Jason Cacciatore, Patty Sklarz, and Kira Miller. Bob Critser of DSP Images helped design and acquire this sign.
