Bradford Cemetery in Huntsville, Alabama
I would like more information about the Bradford Cemetery in Huntsville, Alabama. It is located off Bradford Drive near the intersection of Wynn Drive in the wooded area. I would love to go into the woods to see if I can see any tombstones but I don't want to attract the wrong attention. I have a few ancestors buried there, thanks to familysearch.org. It is an African-American cemetery. I contacted the library to see if they had list of who was buried there and they do not have one. There is no historical marker or sign showing where it is. Do anyone have any suggestions about where to find who is buried there. Thanks.
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Re: Bradford Cemetery in Huntsville, Alabama
If I lived anywhere near Huntsville, I would love to help you out and I know no one there. Good luck and sorry I could not help. judy
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Re: Bradford Cemetery in Huntsville, Alabama
There are two traditionally African-American funeral homes close by that might have some idea of the interments in that cemetery. Nelms, Royal funeral homes are on the internet.
I have a friend of mine in Huntsville who will look for the owner of the property and see if a survey can be done.
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Re: Bradford Cemetery in Huntsville, Alabama
I emailed Royal and haven't gotten a response yet. That will be a cool thing if your friend could do that. Thanks!
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Re: Bradford Cemetery in Huntsville, Alabama
Might want to give the funeral homes a call. Sometimes the email monitor (secretary, what not) might be on vacation or unavailable.
Yes, my friend said he'll take a look at the site to see what's going on and get a survey done (with pictures). He's glad to know that another cemetery has been found that hopefully can be preserved. He's a dedicated volunteer for Madison County for sure and a great guy. I'll let you know if he finds anything out.
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Re: Bradford Cemetery in Huntsville, Alabama
I'll try calling or going by there soon. Okay, thanks so much!
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Re: Bradford Cemetery in Huntsville, Alabama
I finally made an excuse to actually visit Bradford Cemetery today, after years of planning to do so and procrastinating. I'd just discovered the great smartphone app from BillionGraves.com that uses your phone's GPS to geo-tag the photos as you take them, and then uploads them to the site for transcribing. The map coordinates for Bradford Cemetery are perfectly accurate.
Sadly, while there are clearly numerous graves (as denoted by the fairly evenly spaced depressions in the ground where they have sunken in), I only found evidence of a single grave marker. There is one grave with a small, plain footstone and and the base for a headstone (with mortar residue from where the headstone had been attached), but the headstone was no where to be seen. I looked around for a bit, but the whole area has a very thick layer of leaves covering everything, so nothing was visible aside from the depressions in the ground.
It's fairly easy to get to, the best approach is to take the western most entrance to the Lockeed building and park by the softball field in the back. As you look toward the west, there is what looks like a maintenance trail that leads into the woods. There is some kind of 3' tall junction box you'll see next to a telephone poll. From there if you just start walking south up the hill, within about 10-15 feet, you're in the cemetery. There are no signs or markings to indicate its existence, just the sunken graves. I suspect the cemetery predates both Nelms and Royal Funeral Homes, so the search for records may be a challenging one.
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