Debra Taylor Gonzales-Garcia
15 Jun 2023
Preserving a historic cemetery was never on my bucket list of things to do. My passion for genealogy led me to Geer Cemetery to research the people buried within it. It would be my way of giving back humanity to those whose life stories and contributions have been forgotten. However, things do not always go according to plan. Fast forward four years and I’m deeply involved in preserving Geer Cemetery and others like it.
The physical preservation is where I had initially drawn the line. I don’t like working in overgrown plants; I prefer to look at nature from a distance—including insects and other wildlife. I’m so afraid of snakes, even the thought of them makes me shudder. I wouldn’t know what poison ivy (or any of its cousins) looked like if I was staring at it. Despite all that, you can find me on selected days (during the cold months) pulling English ivy and more. And I spend much more time doing genealogy research and working with others to make Friends of Geer Cemetery a vital organization to preserve Geer Cemetery.
It all began because I was researching a woman who provided an interview for the WPA slave narratives. I knew that her husband founded St. Joseph AME Church in Durham, NC, and was buried in Geer Cemetery, but all the information published about the cemetery didn’t include her. Reviewing her death certificate confirmed that she was buried in Geer Cemetery. I was driven to locate her gravesite and ensure that Millie Markham is publicized as much as her husband, Edian. I felt the fact that she contributed a first-person narrative to the WPA interviews was important and worth recognizing. She is one of only two known interview subjects in the Durham area who are confirmed as being buried in Geer Cemetery.
My focused beginning at Geer Cemetery has now expanded into, on the one hand, full preservation of the physical burial ground, and on the other into the development of life stories. I quickly understood that both sides of the preservation coin are needed.
I’ve also learned that this is social justice work. The cemetery, established around 1877, was the African American response to segregationist practices of the community post emancipation. It was one of several that existed in Durham for the same reason. I think of it as the African American resilience in the face of exclusion from the Durham city cemetery that led them to create their own public burial spaces as they continued to fight for equal access to the Durham city-supported cemetery. It would take fifty years after the signing of the first deed associated with Geer Cemetery before the city established an equal but separate cemetery for African Americans—Beechwood Cemetery.
It has been an exciting journey to research and learn about Durham’s rich history and the people who created it. Even those whose lives were very short tell a story related to Durham. I feel preserving this collective cultural heritage is important, exciting, and rewarding. I have researched not only those in Geer Cemetery but other cemeteries also. I have found a wealth of people who made remarkable achievements in their lifetimes and it has created a pull within me to learn more.
I’ve also continued my research on Millie Markham. Unfortunately, to this day, a marker has not been found for either Millie or her husband. I’ll keep looking!
About the Author: Debra Taylor Gonzales-Garcia has been researching her family genealogy for over 30 years. She is President of Friends of Geer Cemetery and is a member of AAHGS, NCG, Genealogy Speakers Guild, and APG. She received her BS from North Carolina Central University and M. Ed. from North Carolina State University.
Notes
- 1Photo by Dimitris Vetsikas (dimitrisvetsikas1969@pixaby.com). Used by permission.