Date of Award
May 2021
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Historic Preservation
Committee Member
Amalia Leifeste
Committee Member
Emily Ford
Committee Member
Frances H Ford
Committee Member
Barry Stiefel
Abstract
The goal of this work is to provide researchers, preservationists, and historians with an in-depth look of the treatment of graves and gravesites over time by Bethel United Methodist Church and Old Bethel United Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina. This data can hopefully be used by researchers in a broader sense to understand the treatment of white and African American burials over time.
Gravestones and sites can reflect how we see people within society in the past, present, and future. Therefore, documentation of social and cultural history along with the documentation of the built environment that contains tangible artifacts such as cemeteries and gravestones is pertinent to our duty as preservations to preserve for future generations.
The preservation of the history and culture of African Americans, so often considered ordinary people to the historic record, may have been overlooked in their lifetime in terms of contributing to the historic record, but they are memorialized after their death.
This more nuanced interpretation and analysis of Bethel and Old Bethel’s cemeteries by exploring the gravesite monuments, and maintenance conditions of the cemetery, has shown intentional reflections of attitudes toward the graves of their congregation members as well as attitudes over time due to time period of activity. This, in a sense, has shown each cemetery’s style over time and a sense of identity. While they began as one, each cemetery has created an identity for itself through the acts of the congregations that are interred within its parameters.
Recommended Citation
Clifton, Sarah, "The Graveyard Shift: Treatment of Gravesites Over Time at Bethel and Old Bethel Churches in Charleston, South Carolina" (2021). All Theses. 3526.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_theses/3526