Families and religious leaders in Silver Spring, Maryland, believe the remains of dozens of people are likely buried beneath the parking lot of a shopping center.
The Seminary Place Shopping Center on Georgia Avenue is now home to an Aldi grocery store, a closed-down car wash and other shops. But from 1825 to 1963, dozens of people, including some formerly enslaved families, were buried there near a church.
Rev. Will Ed Green of Silver Spring United Methodist Church said the remains of only six people were officially moved when the property of the Mt. Zion Methodist Episcopal Church cemetery was sold in 1964.
Green and other church leaders believe at least 38 people’s graves were never relocated.
Church leaders read the names of the missing ancestors aloud and said prayers during a reconsecration ceremony at the parking lot Wednesday morning.
“It became known to the leadership of Silver Spring that individuals have been buried here, that this had been a burial ground that had been desecrated. And the burial ground contains remains of many of those who were enslaved,” Bishop Latrelle Easterling, the leader of the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church, said after the ceremony.
As Methodist churches in the area worked to solve the mystery, a road improvement project along Georgia Avenue presented a unique opportunity.
The Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA) and Silver Spring United Methodist Church hired surveyors to use ground-penetrating radar devices to investigate any evidence of burials underneath the parking lot.
“We have good reason to believe that there could be people who were left behind here and that’s who we’re trying to find,” said Lisa Kraus, a senior archeologist with the Maryland SHA.
“If there’s something down there, like a piece of a casket or hardware or something like that, that’s going send a little indication,” said Steve Archer, assistant division chief of the cultural resources section of SHA.
Paulette Smith Dawes attended the reconsecration ceremony and believes it’s possible her great-great grandfather is buried there. She said she’s been searching for his grave without success.
“Just knowing that all these years, all these years, that they could very well have been just right here. Right here,” she said.
Smith Dawes said if his remains are discovered, she’d be OK with letting them stay at the site of the old cemetery.
“I’m OK, I’m OK with that. It’s just the knowing and the peace. It’s like a closure,” she said.
If graves are discovered on the land the state bought, surviving descendants will be able to give input on whether or not those graves should be moved.
But it’s unclear what would happen if graves are discovered on the property that is privately owned.
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