USF forensic researchers rediscover 45 lost cemeteries in Hillsborough County

TAMPA, Fla. - USF forensic scientist Dr. Erin Kimmerle says she spent the last two years combing through historic records to track down the long-forgotten sites. The cemeteries became abandoned for a variety of reasons but once lost from official records and built over, they are extremely difficult to relocate.

"Historic records don’t include an address or location data very often," explained Kimmerle.

According to Kimmerle, many historic records include land ownership information as opposed to physical addresses or street names. One re-discovered cemetery titled "1916 Platt Map" in the report is believed to be in the vicinity of the John Carney Memorial in Valrico. 

Kimmerle believes it was likely located with the original Carney burial site, but she notes the marker for the memorial has changed locations through the years. Complicating things further, the Carney family plot was originally 170 acres and is now mostly residential. The cemetery is believed to be located on lands owned by Hillsborough County.

Some historic burial records include names of neighborhoods and streets that no longer exist.

The Montana City Cemetery, labeled as a "colored" cemetery in the Jim Crow era, is believed to lie somewhere between Martin Luther King Boulevard to the south (then known as Buffalo Avenue) and East Chelsea Street to the north. The former neighborhood’s streets (Culver, Church, Clifford, Glover, Hill, Haynes, Marshall, and Richardson) have all been either renamed or simply buried along with the lost cemetery.

Kimmerle explains Montana City, a majority Black neighborhood in the segregation era, is one of several neighborhoods that fell victim to racist land policies.

"The 1940s and 1950s were often associated with what was called slum clearance projects. They were targeting certain neighborhoods for demolition and used very predatory land practices," said Kimmerle.

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Federal redlining maps helped pave the way for the destruction of many historic Black and minority neighborhoods across the country. Created in the 1930s by agents of the federal government’s Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, the maps used a color-coded system to show lenders which areas were deemed "highly desirable" (green) and which were considered "hazardous" (red). Those living in areas shaded in red were deemed too risky for lenders to loan money for the purchase of homes. Racial and ethnic identity were heavily used as the basis on which entire areas of a city were graded.

In Tampa, Ybor City, Palmetto Beach, East Tampa and parts of Tampa Heights and West Tampa were redlined. The official Residential Security Map’s writers explained, " The Sections contain some level and some rolling land and Latins and Negroes occupy about 95% of the Sections."

The map’s authors also warn that certain more favorably graded areas of Tampa, like the Riverside Heights neighborhood, could soon fall into a lower grade: "The population in the section is gradually shifting to Spanish and Jewish and within the next five years will probably contain only a few 100% Americans."

The maps not only made it extremely difficult for neighbors inside redlined areas to buy homes, but they also painted a target on lands sought after by developers and guided redevelopment decisions for highways and other municipal projects.

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"What you see a lot of after the 1930s is this targeting of certain neighborhoods. They are demolished and taken and of course, the burial grounds get absorbed into that," said Kimmerle. "I think when you look across Tampa Bay over the last few years and look at the re-discovered sites like at Tropicana Field, Zion, and Ridgewood, you see that pattern and some of these fall into that pattern as well."

Of the 45 re-discovered cemeteries in the report, Kimmerle found:

• 14 sites historically classified as African American, Afro-Cuban, "Colored" or "Negro"
• 3 segregated graveyards that included "white" and "colored" sections where African American, afro-Cuban, "mulatto" and Chinese people were buried
• 15 sites were classified as "white" during segregation. Many of these were family plots.

Of these, 14 have geolocation data and 31 have general vicinity location information or have no known geolocation data.

Kimmerle also notes in addition to white and "colored" designations for segregation during the Jim Crow Era, other ethnic, religious, and national groups also practiced historically separate burial areas in Hills County including the Italians, Spanish, the Spanish Asturians, white Cubans, Afro-Cubans, Catholics, Protestants, and Jewish communities.

"What we see are there are different reasons why a cemetery might fall out of use. Sometimes it’s because of abandonment and other times there were things going on in certain neighborhoods with development projects or slum clearance projects," said Kimmerle. "So there are different mechanisms going on and I think that’s important for the community and making sure that that history is complete."