Charleston, centuries old, has a disproportionate amount of sacred ground compared with other places in America. Its burial sites are so numerous that many have been lost to nature and neglect.
The dead are laid to rest in historic cemeteries such as Magnolia, in cemeteries run by burial societies that operate today on a shoestring and in unmarked graves throughout the Lowcountry. But it’s the churchyards, with their generations at rest, that most vividly remind people of the ways in which the past is populated by religious and political leaders, laborers, soldiers, mothers and fathers, and children taken too soon. At an old Lowcountry church, where parking lots fill and worshippers gather, one can grasp the link between past and present — the continuity of history.
Fifty years ago, the majority of burials still took place in churchyards, said Johnny Stuhr of Stuhr Funeral Homes. Today, most churchyards, especially those on the Charleston peninsula, are out of space, and one can find a resting place there only if the congregation has installed a columbarium to hold the ashes of the deceased.
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