Woman advocates to tidy damaged cemetery

PORTSMOUTH

It's not so much the latest damage at the Mount Calvary Cemetery complex that upsets Christina Carlton.

It's how long it's taken anyone to clean it up.

Carlton has been trying for three months to get the city to help her remove the trees and large limbs that fell over paths and graves during the nor'easter in November. Even at such a long-neglected burial ground, she figured the work would have been done in a couple of weeks.

"Once it started rolling into a month, two months, I'm like, 'This is crazy,' " she said.

The sheriff's office has helped maintain the site in the past with inmate work crews. But wet weather has made it risky to take heavy equipment into the soggy, flooded grounds, said Lt. Karin Johnson, a spokeswoman.

Carlton said workers could at least walk in with chainsaws, like she has done. She has offered to haul away the debris in a wheelbarrow if somebody would help her cut up the largest pieces of dead wood.

The graveyard, which includes the Mount Olive and Fisher's Hill cemeteries and a potter's field, was started in part by former slaves, said Mae Breckenridge-Haywood, president of the African American Historical Society of Portsmouth. Prominent plots include those for educator I.C. Norcom, former slave and columnist Jeffrey Wilson, and child advocate Ida Barbour.

Carlton, a petty officer first class in the Navy who lives a few miles away, is interested in family histories and has a strong respect for the dead. She was volunteering and advocating for the cemeteries before the nor'easter hit.

Trash and broken headstones have long plagued the area. For visitors, who are seldom, the lingering storm damage adds to the feeling that here, in middle of the city, is a forgotten cemetery.

Relatives Maggie and George Howard, dead for more than a century, have graves marked for their "Heavenly Rest" - and a long, 5-inch-thick branch propped overhead. One tree trunk blocks a pathway. Another crushes an unmarked stone slab.

The city has been working for several years to take over the cemeteries. It acquired Mount Calvary in 2003 and is working on Fisher's Hill and Mount Olive, which are privately owned but abandoned, City Attorney Tim Oksman said. His staff just tracked down a 19th century deed that confirms the city owns the potter's field, also known as the Pauper's Cemetery, where the unknown or poor were buried.

Breckenridge-Haywood, who wrote a book about people buried in the area, applied for a grant to help restore and preserve the cemeteries, but she is still awaiting a response.

For now, Carlton is focused on the storm debris. In early January she e-mailed City Manager Kenneth Chandler and some council members for help. Vice Mayor Bill Moody Jr. and Councilman Charles B. Whitehurst Sr. responded and told Chandler they supported action.

Carlton was still waiting more than a month later, so she asked the council again at its meeting Tuesday. She was scheduled to leave Friday night for a four-month deployment overseas, and she doesn't plan to drop the issue.

"Even though you may not see me standing in front of you here for council, you will most definitely be receiving my e-mail," she said.

Chandler told the council he would look into the request and report back as soon as he could.

Dave Forster, (757) 446-2627, dave.forster@pilotonline.com