Dixonville Cemetery task force looks at improvements

Some of the few remaining headstones in the Dixonville Cemetery. 449 known burials are said to have been perform in the 2 acre plot. The cemetery recieved a historic marker and it was dedicated during a ceremony. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

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By Mark Wineka

mwineka@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — The task force working on a Dixonville Cemetery memorial learned Thursday that utility poles probably will have to stay where they are on the site.

Carlton Jackson, senior distribution engineer for Duke Energy, went over all the options for going underground or relocating five to six utility poles along Old Concord Road and concluded that the best choice for the task force might be to leave them where they are.

The best aesthetic option for the project would be to put the utility lines underground, but Jackson warned the cost for making that happen could approach $1 million. Relocating the poles and lines to the back part of the site near the old Lincoln School or moving them across the street posed other challenges.

Persuading homeowners on the other side of Old Concord Road to live with utility poles immediately in front of their houses would be a hard sell, Jackson said.

“It’s just not aesthetically pleasing,” he added.

Fred Evans, chairman of the task force, agreed.

“I really didn’t like imposing our problem on the neighbors,” he said.

Jackson also advised against moving the poles closer to the existing sidewalk, saying not much would be gained over the short distance. If anything, Duke Energy could evaluate the spacing between poles and look at shifts left or right to make it blend in better with the project, Jackson said.

Chris Harrison, a graduate student in landscape architecture at N.C. A&T University, asked if there could be attachments to the pole, as a way of possibly incorporating them into the project design.

“Typically, we don’t allow the disguising of a pole,” Jackson said, for reasons of worker safety and access.

For now, the task force is looking at a first phase that will include a “memorial walk” along Old Concord Road.

It would include a stone wall with periodic granite columns and a stamped/ scored concrete walk to take the place of the regular sidewalk. The wall and columns will make up a timeline, incorporating the names of people buried in the historic African-American cemetery and information about the community, which changed drastically with urban renewal in the 1960s.

Laser etching probably would be used to incorporate the names and storylines into the granite markers. There also would be breaks in the wall to allow access to the cemetery.

Harrison has recommended a wave pattern in the wall between the columns. Other elements call for a row of lacebark elms along the wall, decorative tree grates and fountain and fiber-optic grasses.

Visitors could sit on the wall. Harrison said the lacebark elms are canopy trees that grow up to 30 feet high, which again might be in conflict with the utility poles, depending on where they are placed.

The memorial walk would be a first phase. A second phase would include some kind of monument or art installation, walking paths within the cemetery and additional landscaping.

Janet Gapen, a senior planner for the city, said she and Evans will try to schedule a meeting with Mayor Paul Woodson in the near future to give him an update on the project. After that meeting, Gapen said, the city might be able to schedule a working lunch for 10 to 15 people to initiate fundraising for the project.

The city has made a Dixonville Cemetery-Lincoln community memorial an official goal, but most of the money toward the project will have to be raised through private donations and grants.

The Dixonville Cemetery, which is city maintained, has some trees and 28 remaining markers, though many hundreds, possibly thousands, of African-Americans were buried there from the mid- 19th century to the 1960s. Historian Betty Dan Spencer has documented the burials of 477 people from 1910 until the urban renewal effort was launched. She relied on records from funeral homes and death certificates in the Register of Deeds office.

But hundreds more could have been buried in the Dixonville Cemetery tract before 1910.

Spencer believes the main burying years on the 2 acres probably were from 1874, when it became city-owned, until 1910.

The earliest documented burial is 1851. One of the more famous people buried in Dixonville Cemetery is Bishop John Jamison Moore, who founded the AME Zion Church in western North Carolina.

Perry Howard, program coordinator and associate professor of landscape architecture at N.C. A&T, generated the overall design concept for the cemetery memorial, and Harrison is following through on some of the details. The university has provided the design assistance at no cost.

Cosmetic improvements to Dixonville Cemetery occurred several years ago, and a roadside historic marker was added. In 2010, then Mayor Susan Kluttz called for establishment of the task force and asked it to develop a memorial design and fundraising plan in cooperation with the city.

Contact Mark Wineka at 704-797-4263.