Clay County volunteer effort adds eight cemeteries to Florida master file; board maps historic burial sites

At the June 1 Clay County Historical Preservation Board meeting, board member Kathy reported recent progress on cemetery documentation across the county. She said eight cemeteries were added to the Florida state master file in the past weeks: Middleburg Methodist, Russell Haven of Rest, Oakland, Kingsley, Lake, Buddington, Black Pond Baptist, Long Branch and Oak Grove Baptist. Kathy said she was preparing to submit Shiloh Baptist for listing after speaking with the pastor.

Kathy described fieldwork with a colleague, Jennifer, visiting Long Branch, Kingsley Lake and Buddington to record visible graves and memorials. She told the board that Kingsley Lake and Long Branch each contain “over a thousand burials” and said Kingsley Lake appears to have burials dating back to the 1850s. At Long Branch she reported numerous small, unmarked stones that indicate historic burials without legible markers.

Kathy said archival research and outreach to family members led to removal of some sites from the county list where evidence showed graves no longer exist or sites never were established. She cited one example where a “Robert’s family burial ground” listed on Find-a-Grave had only two memorials; living family members told researchers those graves were destroyed when a railroad was built.

Kathy said she used multiple sources in her research, including materials from Elizabeth Spencer, a James Boone cemetery survey from the 1950s–60s, online databases such as Find-a-Grave, and county archival records. She said a former member of the Clay County Historical Commission provided minutes and records going back to the 1970s; those minutes end in September 2011 and she is still seeking records covering 2011–present.

Kathy asked the board to note that some cemetery records are complicated by name inconsistencies (for example, Pleasant Point / Mount Pleasant / Mount Olive in different sources), and urged collaboration between the archives and the preservation board to consolidate records. She said the state’s historic-resources staff have been responsive, sometimes assigning site numbers within hours of a formal submission.

The board did not take formal action—there was no quorum—but members praised Kathy’s fieldwork and encouraged further submissions to the state master file.