Historic Brattonsville is known as a place that provides insight into the life of African Americans in the South, with a focus on the 18th and 19th centuries when hundreds of enslaved workers lived at the site. A ceremony was held Saturday at the former plantation near Rock Hill to honor enslaved people buried at a site where archaeologists and museum leaders say they’ve identified at least 481 people of African descent.
A group of people walked through a bunch of leaves scattered at a forest cemetery in Brattonsville on Saturday. They sang as they gathered around the only headstone in the five-acre area. The group includes descendants of the plantation’s enslaved and enslavers.
Dr. Lisa Bratton was among them. Bratton teaches history at Tuskegee University in Alabama and is a descendant of the Bratton Plantation. She said she was there with the group to acknowledge the hundreds of people who were laid to rest.
“This cemetery has been here for over 100 years and has basically been neglected and forgotten about," Bratton said. "So, all these men, women, and children who are buried here just have been lost to history. But today, we are recognizing them and giving them the honor that they are due, the respect that they are due, and making sure everyone knows that these lives matter.”
Bratton started coming here when she was about 6 years old. Bratton’s great-great grandparents, Green and Malinda Bratton, were enslaved at the plantation. Bratton also shares ancestral ties with the Bratton family who enslaved them. She said she has been able to build close relationships with the white Bratton's descendants.
“We travel together, we're working on a quilt together. They’ve been giving a lot of input about the cemetery," Bratton said. "We’ve been to other plantations together. So, it’s just a really positive relationship, which is very uncommon when it comes to Black and white descendant groups. It’s almost unheard of.”
Over a dozen descendants gathered at the cemetery. They sang, smiled, laughed, and shed tears as they paid tribute to the hundreds of people buried. Saturday’s ceremony has been made possible by Culture and Heritage Museums. The group received a grant three years ago that helped with their efforts to study what is now known as “Enslaved Ancestral Burial Ground.”
Through ground-penetrating radar, the group says they were able to identify at least 481 people buried. Carey Tilley, the director of Historic Properties at Historic Brattonsville, worked closely with the team behind the study. He said, there are other things the study highlights besides the number of people who are buried.
“We know there’s a lot of smaller graves out here. ... And, that suggests a child is buried there or an infant,” Tilley said.
Tilley said just a little less than half of the people buried in the cemetery could be children and infants.
Other findings are clearer on the surface, such as the Watt and Polly headstone. The formerly enslaved couple were honored at the ceremony. Watt is viewed as a hero during the Revolutionary War.
As the British approached, Watt was sent out to warn the Brattonsville plantation owner. His contribution helped the Americans beat the British in what is known as the 1780 Battle of Huck’s Defeat.
Zach Lemhouse, a historian with the museum, said part of the reason Watt and his wife Polly have the only headstone could be tied to Watt’s contribution.
“It was highly uncommon for an enslaver to spend the kind of money to have a stone cutter engrave a marble headstone like that,” Lemhouse said. "Typically, an enslaved person — if they got anything — they get an engraved field stone that you could kick when you were plowing the field.”
On the couple's headstone, there’s an inscription that mentions Watt’s faithfulness during the Revolutionary War. The museum has now placed steel markers approved by the descendants to honor the hundreds of other lives buried at the cemetery.
Bratton Holmes walks through the leaves next to the markers. Holmes resides in Chapel Hill and is a middle school teacher. John Simpson Bratton — a former owner of the Bratton Plantation which had over 100 people enslaved by 1840 — is his great-great-great-grandfather. Holmes is still working to process that information.
“It’s caused me to be a little bit more introspective than I probably would have been otherwise about my background, about the situation that I was born into, the opportunities that I had in life that not necessarily everybody else did have," Holmes said.
Holmes, who appeared at the cemetery with family members, said participating in the ceremony and interacting with other descendants impacted by slavery in the South has provided him with an opportunity.
“To learn other people’s perspectives on what happened. And to rethink for myself, about the legacy this has caused," Holmes said. "Because, whether we want to admit it or not, the scars of slavery are still very much present in this society.”
Descendants who sang and walked the enslaved ancestral burial ground, hope the future opening of the cemetery will inspire others to relearn about a group of people who were buried without markers but are forgotten no more.
