More Than Our Past
We visit cemeteries to connect to people from the past. We pay our respects to deceased friends and family members; we clean and decorate graves; we take rubbings of engraved headstones; we piece together our family histories.
But cemeteries tell us much more than the names and lifespans of the people who lived before us. Cemeteries tell stories about our community’s past, present, and future.

Reading the Landscape
Factors like where a cemetery is located; its size, shape, and topography; how graves are oriented, marked, and decorated; and how a cemetery is maintained can help us understand a community’s values and the policies that have impacted them.
In this exhibit, we’ll look at both the people laid to rest in the South Asheville Cemetery–Western North Carolina’s oldest public cemetery for African American burials–as well as the cemetery’s landscape in order to explore the broader history of Asheville and better understand how our history continues to effect our present.

A Close Connection
The South Asheville Cemetery was founded in the early 1800s as a burial ground for people who had been enslaved by the Smith family–the first family to live in what is currently known as the Smith-McDowell House, a c1840s brick mansion that is now home to the Western North Carolina Historical Association (WNCHA). The house and cemetery eventually came into the possession of one of the Smith daughters, who married a McDowell. Even though the house was sold out of the McDowell family in 1881, at least part of the cemetery land was owned by the McDowell family until 1981.
With such a close association between WNCHA’s facility and the cemetery, we are uniquely positioned to help uncover the history of this burial ground and the hidden histories of the people buried within its bounds.
Because it was illegal for enslaved people to learn to read or write, the best source of written primary documentation we have about people who were enslaved in Western North Carolina often comes from letters, wills, deeds, and other written communications from their enslavers. It is important to keep in mind, then, that what we know about the people buried in the South Asheville Cemetery prior to 1865 has most often been written by their enslavers.
<1,961
the number of graves
in the South Asheville Cemetery
according to a 2002 survey
>100
the number of graves
with engraved markers
in the South Asheville Cemetery
>2,215
the number of burials
in the South Asheville Cemetery after 1914
according to a survey of death certificates
From southashevillecemetery.net: In the Spring of 2014, Warren Wilson College environmental studies graduate Linden Blaisus (class of 2011) and members of the Warren Wilson College GIS crew digitized a comprehensive grave mapping effort conducted by the College’s archeology crew. The Warren Wilson College archeology crew gathered these data with the help of volunteers and AmeriCorps teams over the 1990s and early 2000s. The original archeological map is above. The newly geo-referenced Google Earth file (as a KML file) is available for download by clicking the button below.
Before 1776
The founding of the South Asheville Cemetery begins with its first burial. To determine when the first burial occurred in the cemetery, we have to go back to the beginnings of non-native settlement in the area. Like all of Asheville, the 2-acre parcel of land on which the South Asheville Cemetery is located was Cherokee land, and the land of their ancestors. The 2-acre parcel of land that the cemetery now encompasses likely came into non-native possession by way of a land grant from the state of North Carolina.nd of their ancestors.
Image (at right): An artist’s conception of the Pisgah village at the Warren Wilson site (drawing by Frank Weir, 1970; from Dickens 1976:95). Accessed April 15, 2021 from UNC Archaeology
Image (below): Map showing native lands in Western North Carolina from Native Land Digital. Accessed April 15, 2021

Founding a Cemetery
From oral tradition, we believe that the first non-native settlers in the Asheville area were white families and the enslaved African Americans who were forced to come with them into the Blue Ridge Mountains in the 1780s.
Varying newspaper reports, dating back to the 1980s theorize potential dates for when the first burial occurred in the South Asheville Cemetery. These reports include the following phrases “the cemetery could have been in use since the 1790s,” “graves date at least as far back as 1834,” and “according to oral tradition, there is a tombstone in the cemetery that dates back to 1854, and is the only tombstone in North Carolina of someone who died while enslaved.”
Unfortunately, we haven’t yet been able to verify any of these dates, and we don’t currently know the date of the earliest burial in what would become South Asheville Cemetery. It is possible, however, that it was prior to the turn of the 19th century.
To estimate a founding date, we need a fuller picture of the history of the land and the lives of the people who may have been laid to rest there.
Image (below): The 1787 land grant from the state to William Stewart of 640 acres in Burke County, State Archives of North Carolina

Colonialization by Land Grant
After the creation of North Carolina as a state in 1776 one of the first duties of the General Assembly was to pass an act in November 1777 that allowed men who swore their allegiance to the state to purchase 640 acres of “vacant” land for 50 shillings an acre and begin colonizing the area.
We know from land deeds that Daniel Smith, the first of this line of the Smith family to settle here, purchased 308 acres from William Stewart in 1796, which was part of Stewart’s 640-acre land grant purchase from the state in 1787. Stewart’s land ran along the east side of the French Broad River and included acreage on both sides of the Swannanoa River.
Image (at right): Deed for 308 acres at the mouth of the Swannanoa River to Daniel Smith from William Stewart, April 21, 1796 (Buncombe County Register of Deeds, Book 3, Page 92)

Daniel Smith’s 308-acre tract appears to have covered much of what is now the Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College campus to the north and east of the confluence of the Swannanoa and French Broad rivers, but doesn’t appear to quite reach the land that is now home to the 2,000+ people buried in the South Asheville Cemetery.
We are pretty confident, however, that Daniel Smith, who waged war against native people throughout his life, was the first person in this branch of the Smith family to enslave people in the Asheville area–people who could have potentially passed away while enslaved by the family. At this time, we don’t know where they would have been buried.
Image (at left): Map of the confluence of the French Broad and Swannanoa Rivers showing in yellow the approximate location of the 308-acre tract that Daniel Smith purchased from William Stewart in 1796 and its relation to the present-day location of the South Asheville Cemetery (blue pin) and Smith-McDowell House (red pin)
Image (below): Daniel Smith’s rifle, Long Tom, on display at the Smith-McDowell House

It appears that the land that is now the South Asheville Cemetery became part of the Smith family’s land holdings when Daniel’s son, James, purchased a 254-acre tract from Lorenzo D. Patton on November 7, 1831 for $864 (Book 16/468). Lorenzo had inherited the land from his father, John Patton, who had purchased it from NC land grant recipients in 1794. The land remained with James Smith until his death in 1856 when he willed the land to his daughter, Sarah Lucinda Smith. Smith wrote in his 1850 will:
I will and devise to her and her heirs forever the tract of land on the south of Asheville on both sides of the Buncombe T. P. [turnpike] road (and at the fork leading by Foster’s) which tract I purchased of L. D. Patton and is supposed to contain about three hundred and twenty acres, all of which I estimate at four thousand three hundred dollars.
This is supported by the 1981 transfer of the land from descendants of Sarah Lucinda McDowell to the South Asheville Cemetery Association (Book 1278/92) , which reads:
…And being part of that property devised to Sara [sic] L. McDowell in the will of James M. Smith, and being more commonly known as the South Asheville Cemetery.

1850: The First-Known Deaths
The 1850 mortality schedules in Buncombe County identify four people who died between March and May 1850 while enslaved by James M. Smith or William W. McDowell. (McDowell had married Smith’s daughter Sarah in 1846.) Two of them had likely been mentioned in Smith’s 1850 will and two had not yet been born.
The 1850 mortality schedules report the following individuals:
- A 12-year-old girl, unnamed, born in North Carolina, and enslaved by James Smith, died in March 1850 from a tumor in her hip that she had suffered from for the past year.
- A 2-year-old unnamed little girl, enslaved by W.W. McDowell and born in North Carolina, died in April 1850 of Whooping Cough after being sick for 10 days.
- Two babies, a 10-day-old little boy and a 1-day-old little girl, died in May 1850 after being born prematurely.
It is possible that the unnamed 12-year-old girl was the first person laid to rest in the South Asheville Cemetery.
Image: 1850 Mortality Schedules, Buncombe County

1850 - 1854: Tilda and Bob
Even before his father’s death in 1824, James M. Smith had begun to acquire land and enslaved people. By 1840, James M. Smith enslaved 70 people and owned much of the land in Buncombe County.
In 1850, he enslaved 66 people, meaning that in the intervening decade, at least four people were either sold, given their freedom, or passed away. It is unlikely that they were given their freedom based on an excerpt from Smith’s 1850 will.
In his will, James M. Smith wrote,
“My old man, Phillip, has long been a faithful servant and useful to myself and family, I direct no labor be required of him, but that he be allowed to live with my wife or my son, John P. Smith, as he prefers, and as the law requires that he must have an owner, I give him as the property of my son, John P. , in confidence that he will take care of him and protect him, and I give and bequeath to Phillip twenty-five dollars per annum as long as he lives for his comfort, to be paid out of my estate. If the legacy cannot legally take effect directly to him, I leave it to be paid to John P. Smith having a confidence that he will faithfully apply it as here intended.”
It seems likely that at least one person passed away prior to Smith’s 1850 will and that with their death the cemetery was founded. However, the next recorded deaths we have found are of Tilda and Bob between 1850 and 1854.
Image: James M. Smith will, excerpt, quoted above, February 9, 1850

1853-1856: Polly and James Smith Die
James M. Smith wrote the January 1854 codicil to his will because less than a month earlier, on December 11, 1853, his wife Mary “Polly” Patton Smith died, just shy of her 60th birthday.
James died a few years later on May 18, 1856. Both James and Polly were buried near the Smith-McDowell House on a hilltop that is now home to Fernihurst mansion. Around 1875, the Smith family exhumed James and Polly and reinterred them in the Newton Academy Cemetery so that the cemetery land could be sold to pay off debts.
Still, James’ and Polly’s double gravestones (at right) and lengthy inscriptions stand in stark contrast to the unengraved field stones likely marking the graves of burials made in the South Asheville Cemetery during the same period.
Image (below): 2021 Map of location of the Smith-McDowell House relative to the two burial locations of the Smiths (Fernihurst and Newton Academy) and the South Asheville Cemetery.

A Note on Medical Care
After James Smith’s death in 1856, his accounts were settled by his son-in-law. Smith owed $201.30 to his doctor for medical care over the last year and a half. And while much of the treatment is for medicines and house calls for himself and his family–the doctor charged $3.00 for coming out to the house in the rain on the day Smith died–some of the costs are for treatments for the people James enslaved, especially for sick children, who are unnamed.
On April 14, 1856, the doctor did visit the house at night to attend to an enslaved woman named Mary at a charge of $1.50. He visited Mary again on the 20th and 21st. It was certainly in Smith’s financial interest to keep the people he enslaved healthy.
Image (at left): 1855-1856, William Wallace McDowell Collection, UNC Special Collections

After James Smith’s death, his daughter, Sarah Lucinda Smith McDowell and her husband
William inherited the land on which the South Asheville Cemetery is located.
It appears that the South Asheville Cemetery is located at the top right hand corner
of the 1887 plat of the McDowells’ land (below) just off what is labeled the “old road.”

This exhibit was funded in part by:
