ELSMERE, Ky. — Overgrown weeds, uneven ground and headstones covered by bushes and trees is putting one historic African American cemetery in disarray.
“These are all over; you could break your ankle,” said Dorothy Watson as she pointed to a large hole in the ground at the Mary E. Smith Cemetery in Elsmere.
Watson has more than a handful of loved ones buried at the Mary E. Smith Cemetery.
“I have two grandmothers, my father, my mother,” said Watson. “I have two aunts, one uncle, an ex-husband, cousins, like I said, friends and neighbors.”
But after what she says is years of neglect, she’s finding it too difficult to visit, or even find, her loved ones. She told us she could only find her mother's and aunt’s headstones.
“If I could afford it, I would remove my loved ones from this cemetery,” said Watson.
Hear the struggles Watson faces to visit her family, and how the cemetery got here:
When walking around the cemetery, you’ll encounter knee-high grass, headstones completely covered, very uneven ground and even headstones hidden under overgrown bushes.
Watson said 10 years ago, it wasn’t like this.
“It was such a beautiful place to come to, everything was just like walking into nature,” said Watson.
The Mary E. Smith Cemetery Board of Trustees denied an on-camera interview. Though we spoke with a trustee over the phone who said the cemetery is independently funded and running out of money, adding that a lot of the costs for grounds care come out of their own pockets.
“It takes a lot, if you don’t have the money, then you have to have the manpower,” said Angelita Jones, chair of the Union Baptist Church Trustee Board.
The Union Baptist Cemetery, a historically Black cemetery in Cincinnati connected to the church, has a similar funding situation. They said a lot more than cutting grass goes into the maintenance of a cemetery.
“Then you have the other part of the ground, right, so the road needs to be maintained just like any other road, and the building needs to be maintained, if there’s a building,” said Dr. Raven Spratley, who is on the Union Baptist Church Cemetery Committee.
She added that fixing uneven ground and headstones that fall over are also costs they have to factor in and maintain.
Mary Smith’s Cemetery Board of Trustees says they have reached out to churches for grants, but that the funding is just not there. They said the cemetery grass will be cut on Wednesday, but for the long term, they need community help. Watson agrees.
“We need lawnmowers, you know everything, we would have to come out here and do it ourselves,” she said.
We reached back out to the Mary Smith trustees to see how anyone who wishes to help can lend a hand. We will update this article when we receive an answer.
