John N. Smith Cemetery

The John N. Smith Cemetery is the largest African American cemetery in Brunswick County where many notable Southport citizens were interned, including servicemen from every war since the Civil War.

The JNS cemetery is the final resting place of many notable Southport residents including Union soldiers Abram Galloway and Abram Blount, Mary Ann Galloway, oldest Southport resident, suffragist Anna Clemons, Elias "Nehi" Gore known as Southport's gentle giant, midwife Eliza Wortham and business leaders Dollie Evans, Malissa Jackson, Herbert Brown, to name just a few of the more than 1000 marked and unmarked graves.

This is an African American cemetery in the small town of Southport, North Carolina. The first recorded burial was in 1874, when Southport was called Smithville.

Located at 225 E. Leonard St. the cemetery was named after the first person to be buried there, John N. Smith.

The Cemetery is the final resting place for an estimated 1500 souls, all of whom are believed to be African American.

Combined these individuals represent an essential component of Southport’s collective memory and of the history of this town on the shore of the Cape Fear River. Interred in this Cemetery were slaves, farmers, teachers, businessmen, laborers, domestic servants, homemakers and entrepreneurs.

Veterans dating from the Civil War and subsequent military campaigns are also buried here.

Often cemeteries are the only remaining artifacts of a community’s early residents. By making connections from the present to the past, the John N Smith Cemetery can serve as an inspirational starting point for showing how all races are connected by historical events.

If Southport loses the assets it’s only black cemetery represents, the connective tissue that once bonded people together disappears. However, once a chronicle of the factual history of the Cemetery is realized the result will be pride, respect and appreciation among Southport’s residents. The preservation of the Cemetery can have a unifying influence on Southport while enabling many persons to reclaim a heritage that might otherwise be loss for the ages.

The John N. Smith Cemetery Restoration and Preservation Inc. is a third generation cemetery organization. The organization invites any and all willing to join.

Source link: https://www.johnnsmithcemetery.org/about-us