A new look for an old cemetery in Fort Mill

A historic Fort Mill cemetery looks a little different now, thanks to hard work from the Fort Mill High School ROTC program.

Students spent a recent Saturday cleaning and clearing Blackstock Cemetery, a little more than half-acre site off of U.S. 21 near Carowinds. Sgt. Stephen Sprague brought seven students, mostly freshman, after learning of the site through an annual memorial event in the Flint Hill area.

“They’re local families,” Sprague said of people buried there. “I told (students) this is important because this is where people’s remains will remain for eternity. These are Fort Mill residents who built the community.”

The cemetery was cleaned up a couple of years ago, but largely had overgrown since. Sprague said more students and planning will be needed to keep it from growing back too quickly. Large bushes and small trees on site show some areas likely were untouched for many years.

“The cemetery needs more work to keep it clean,” Sprague said.

Dating back further than the plantlife, were the stones.

“Some of them date back to the 1700s,” Sprague said. “Some of them are pretty much illegible they’re so old.”

The latest burial they observed was from the 1990s. They found nine Confederate soldiers buried there. Jennifer Thompson, mother of student volunteer Ben, took before and after photos during cleanup.

“Before the students’ hard work it was almost impossible to see that the cemetery even existed,” she said.

Last fall, the Fort Mill Times ran an article on Blackstock when construction started on the almost 19 acres surrounding it. Property owner Steve Miller said commercial development was coming, which it has since and will still, but the cemetery would remain intact.

“I have kin buried out there,” he told the Times. “I don’t have any desire to do anything negative there.”

The story prompted several questions and memories from readers, from those who simply wondered about the site on their drives home from work to others with family connections.

Fort Mill resident Joy Cranford recalled her father taking her there many years ago and showing where his great grandfather rests. The site was overgrown then, she said, as it was before the recent cleanup. Cranford later found a brief description dating the location and burial to November 1867.

“He showed me where he remembered going to visit his great-grandfather’s grave,” Cranford said. “Unfortunately, there was no gravestone, so he was going on memory.”

Resident Eric Ransone researched the property for more than a year, all after driving by and wondering what was out there. Ransone contacted everyone from churches to municipal officials to paranormal societies for information.

“I hope someone comes forward with some background history on the cemetery,” he said after the fall article ran, “and that the current and future owners of the property respect and possibly protect it.”

John Blythe said he has visited the site for several decades. Along with roles as preservationist and genealogist, Blythe has a personal connection to the site.

“As someone who has ancestors buried there, I am concerned about its future preservation and maintenance,” he said.

Blackstock ARP began in 1793 and is the mother church of Central Steele Creek Presbyterian Church, at York Road and Westinghouse Boulevard. Along with having a cemetery Blackstock played a role in promoting local history, as Linda Blackwelder began studying it in the mid 1970s when researching Central Steele Creek. Blackwelder turned that research and the conversations it prompted into the Steele Creek Historical and Genealogy Society in 1994.

For students who helped clean it, knowing the cemetery is important to so many people makes it important to them.

“It was hard work, and it was hot,” Ben Thompson said.

“But it was kind of sad to see a place like that so overgrown and neglected, so the work was worth it. Some of the people buried there were soldiers and they shouldn’t be forgotten.”

This story was originally published May 26, 2016 at 5:03 PM with the headline "A new look for an old cemetery in Fort Mill."