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From:
Subject: Re: [SCGREENV] Desperately Looking for Hillcrest Cemetery inGreenville
Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2006 09:49:17 EST
There does not seem to be a list of names anywhere in Greenville County for
who lived and died at the "poorhouses". The County Home cemetery and Lincoln
cemetery are not the same cemeteries, although there may be burials from the
county home at Lincoln. I'm going through the death cert. at the library and have
found abt. 100 so far between 1915-1926 that say "place of burial county
home". The earliest dated tombstone (one of only seven) at the county home is
1924, but judging by the location of the tombstone, burials were started much
earlier there.
I have found no death cert. that specifically say "Lincoln" cemetery; it
probably was listed by a different name at one time and I'm afraid I have missed
them.. It could even be that Lincoln cemetery burials and county home burials
were both listed as "county home" during that time period. However I've only
found one or two people buried at the county home cemetery who were not
residents of the county home. Also, several people who died at Hopewell TB hospital
are buried at the county home cemetery. I think this must have been when the TB
hospital was located in tents on the grounds of the county home.
There is supposed to be an earlier alms house cemetery, nearer to Paris Mt.,
but I don't think anyone can find it. This would predate 1915, I feel sure,
and no death cert. are available for those burials.
The staff at the County Administrators office is still looking for any
records from the county home. There is one account book at the State Archives in
Columbia, 1915-1925, but it list expenditures and only mentions one or two
actual deaths and burials.
Susan
In a message dated 11/23/2006 2:22:21 AM Eastern Standard Time,
writes:
Do you know if any names have been found yet....especially interested in the
"poorhouse names. I know (for surely god couldn't be so cruel) that somewhere
in Greenville County is a list of people who lived and died in the poorhouse.
If only to keep a record of who passed by there. I am beginning to
wonder..............
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posted:
Rusted metal military tags mark some graves; concrete slabs with hand-carved
names and dates stand above others. Most, however, have modest but enduring
granite gravestones incised with dates of birth and death and military records,
primarily from the 1940s and 1950s. The last recorded interment occurred in
1967, when it was known at Hill Crest Cemetery. Its history is as difficult to
trace as the lives of most who are buried here, but Cecil Buchanan, chairman of
the Legion's Lincoln Cemetery Commission, has carefully researched the
long-neglected site.
It was a burial place long before it had a name. Originally a nine-acre site,
it reached from the County Home to Brutontown, an old (1870s) black
neighborhood now being revitalized. By 1904, and probably earlier, the land was used as
a potter's field, a place to bury strangers and the friendless poor. It was
locally known as the County Home Burying Ground. The County Home, since the
middle of the 19th century Greenville's charity refuge (usually referred to as
"the poorhouse"), housed elderly paupers and disabled men and women, both white
and black. They had no families and no money for proper burials. Others buried
there may have been transients or county prisoners; a number were poor
mothers who died in childbirth and were interred with their babies.
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Visit the Greenville County, S.C. GenWeb http://www.rootsweb.com/~scgreenv/
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