In the early 1980s, a young Dean Hairston would sneak over to the former Oak Hill plantation to see the cemetery where his ancestors, who had been enslaved there, were buried.
He would walk around the vacant property, looking at the old slave cabins and peering through the windows of the plantation house, which has since burned down.
The cemetery sites where his ancestors are buried are peaceful, Hairston said.
“It’s on a bluff, lined with periwinkle. It has pine trees growing amongst the graves, and it is a beautifully calm and still sight,” he said. “You can hear the wind blowing, and it’s just peaceful.”
The former Oak Hill plantation in Pittsylvania County has more than 100 graves, mostly unmarked, where mainly enslaved people and sharecroppers are buried. This land is now part of the 3,528-acre Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill, which just landed the largest economic development project in the history of the region.
About 20 miles away is another historic cemetery surrounded by developable land. It’s the family cemetery of cousins James Scruggs, Virginia Stephens-Webb and Christina Wyatt, where generations of their ancestors are buried.
The cousins trekked through the wooded cemetery on a recent Saturday morning, careful not to trip over any field stones that indicate graves. Most of the graves are marked with these nondescript field stones, though some have engraved headstones.
This land was once part of a much larger family farm, but now the 1-acre plot is surrounded by the land where Pittsylvania County will see its first data center.
Finding historic cemeteries on developable land is not uncommon, said Joanna Green, a cemetery archeologist with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.
Because Southside is working to attract development and industry, this is a conversation that will likely continue to crop up in the future, she said, and Pittsylvania and the developers who want to build there will have to decide how to handle it.
For now, residents can watch two different approaches in action — relocating graves or working around the cemetery — as the county works to maintain dignity and respect for its dead in the face of massive developments.
One approach: Relocation
The Oak Hill plantation was owned by the Hairston family, which has both Black and white descendants.
In addition to Hairstons, members of the Adams and Wilson families are also buried in the cemetery sites. Most were tenant farmers on the land between 1870 and 1950, according to a public notice about the grave relocation.
While the two cemetery sites are beautiful, they are not easily accessible. It’s a long walk over treacherous terrain from the closest road, said Matt Rowe, the county’s economic development director.
“It is impossible, truly impossible, to have any kind of easy access,” he said. “You almost have to be in tip-top physical shape. … There are briars, brambles. I destroyed a pair of shoes walking up there with Dean Hairston, and he probably did too.”
After one trip to the site, “I got about 36 ticks off me,” Hairston said.
Though the graves are not on the lot where Microporous will manufacture components for electric vehicle batteries, Pittsylvania County hopes to attract tenants throughout the rest of the megasite. So the county is working with the Hairston family, as well as the Virginia Department of Historic Resources and a team of archaeologists, to move the graves out of the way of future development.
If nothing is done, those graves could belong to whichever company buys the land, Rowe said.
The graves could be developed over, or descendants could lose easy access to the cemeteries. Eventually, they could be forgotten entirely.
The Hairston family supports the relocation process because it will allow for easier access to the graves, provide signage to recognize the families and ensure that those buried aren’t forgotten by future generations.
“With old slave cemeteries, usually what happens is that trees will grow up over it, and people will forget sooner or later,” Hairston said.
The Danville-Pittsylvania County Regional Industrial Facilities Authority, which owns the megasite land, first contacted the Hairstons about this project in 2020.
Since then, they’ve been working with members of the Adams and Wilson families, as well as DHR.
DHR requires that historic cemetery relocations involve a team of archaeologists, unlike modern grave relocations, which can be handled by funeral home staff, Green said.
“When we’re fairly certain the coffin has collapsed or there may not have been coffins at all, we feel that archaeologists have the training and skillset to handle these situations,” Green said.
The industrial facilities authority hired WSP, an archeological consultant based in Washington, D.C., which is leading them through the permitting process, Rowe said. If everything is approved, WSP will also do the on-site work.
The remains from each grave will be documented, removed and put into an archival box, he said.
They will be stored at Fisher & Watkins Funeral Home, which was selected by the Hairston family, until they can be moved from the north side of Berry Hill Road to the south side, to a larger cemetery in a different area of the megasite that will not be developed and is easier to access.
The final step will be to work with the family on a memorial, Rowe said.
Relocating graves is expensive, he said, though he did not provide a dollar amount for the project.
“You only get one crack at it, so it has to be done the right way,” he said. “We are paying for archaeologists themselves to remove these remains. … Once they get down to coffin depth, which is 4 feet or deeper, they are literally in there, painstakingly going through every single scoop.”
Pittsylvania County will provide perpetual maintenance of the new resting place and signage to commemorate the families, Hairston said.
The archaeological team will also attempt to gather DNA samples from the remains so that the family might be able to trace lineages.
“There are only a handful of labs in the United States that can do this work, and we don’t know what the potential will be for retrieval,” Green said. “If retrieved, we don’t know how intact the DNA will be or how much information will be retrieved.”
Hairston said he’s excited about the possibility of being able to establish a line of direct descent.
“That gives us an opportunity to capture something that would have been lost to eternity,” Hairston said. “Now we can see who’s buried there and who’s related to them.”
He’s also looking forward to being able to visit his ancestors more easily.
“At the end of the day, we’ll look back and say, we’re better off now than we were,” Hairston said.
Another approach: Leaving things be
On her most recent visit to the family cemetery, Wyatt began the trip to the Mountain Hill area of Pittsylvania County in her sedan.
She followed her cousin’s pickup truck up a hill on a dirt road until they came to a locked gate. Scruggs and Stephens-Webb got out of the truck to undo the lock, which gave them a little bit of trouble.
“This only happens every time we come out here,” Stephens-Webb said as Scruggs struggled with the lock.
“At least it isn’t as muddy as it was the last time we came up here, right before those hurricanes, during that week of rain,” Scruggs answered, finally successful in unlocking the gate, which he swung open so that both vehicles could drive through.
Just inside the gate, Wyatt parked her sedan and hopped into the passenger seat of the pickup. From here, the terrain is too rough to traverse without four-wheel drive.
The cousins have to drive through a portion of someone else’s land — which they have legal permission to do — to reach their family cemetery.
After a few miles, Scruggs parked the pickup next to a barely visible trail that leads to the cemetery.
Stephens-Webb pulled out a bottle of bug spray and spritzed her own ankles, and then Wyatt’s, before the cousins finished the trip on foot, walking 10 more minutes to the cemetery.
“I try to get here at least once a month,” Scruggs said. “But during the summertime, it gets bad with chiggers. … And them roads aren’t always in that good of shape.”
With the data center development going up around the cemetery, it’s likely the cousins will have better access to this land.
Anchorstone Advisors LLC, the development group behind the project, hopes to work around the historic family cemetery instead of relocating it.
“One, it’s pretty expensive, and two, who wants to disturb a grave?” said Thomas Gallagher with Anchorstone Advisors.
He said that access to the family cemetery would change once development is underway, likely through a new access road. The developers would also place buffers around the cemetery, he said.
Scruggs, Stephens-Webb and Wyatt said they hope that the land, which is overgrown with brush, might be better maintained once the data center is built.
They’re not opposed to the planned data center, but they want to make sure their buried ancestors are cared for.
“I don’t think we want to be an impediment to the county’s progress,” Scruggs said. “The progress is going to happen.”
Their family farm used to span close to 900 acres, land that had been passed down through generations since just before the Revolutionary War, as far as the cousins can tell.
“It’s hard to find documents that old,” Scruggs said.
The cousins do know that older generations sold off the land bit by bit, until just 1 acre, with the family cemetery on it, remained.
Between 40 and 60 people are buried at the cemetery, Scruggs said. Many of the graves are only marked with field stones, and few are in neat rows.
“Some of the field stones, the way they are, it’s hard to tell which one’s the foot and which one’s the head,” said Wyatt, pointing to several crowded stone markers. “Those are real close together, so that’s either two bodies or it’s a baby.”
Many children are buried on this plot, Stephens-Webb said, because of high infant mortality rates and illnesses like the Spanish flu.
The youngest person buried with a marked grave in the family cemetery is Kitty Stephens, who lived for only one day: Feb. 2, 1940.
Stephens-Webb said she anticipates the land will continue to be used as a cemetery for future generations.
“We’re all headed that way,” said Scruggs, although he said he hasn’t given too much thought to whether he’d like to be buried on this land or in Green Hill Cemetery in Danville, where some of his other ancestors are buried.
This land will remain in the family, Stephens-Webb said. It will not be sold to Anchorstone Advisors, and it was not rezoned for development.
Almost 1,000 acres surrounding that plot, however, have already been rezoned for heavy industrial use and will see about a decade of construction on the data center campus project.
Anchorstone approached the family about the cemetery first, Stephens-Webb said. There were a few conversations about moving the graves, but she said she got the impression that the developers would be able to work around it instead. Gallagher confirmed this.
“We’re starting to look at specific things, like whether it makes sense to move it or not, but our preference is not to move it,” Gallagher said. “Sometimes, physically, there’s just no way to work around [a cemetery]. This is not one of those cases.”
The cousins weren’t totally opposed to a relocation, but their preference is to keep the cemetery intact.
Scruggs said he would consider relocating the graves, as long as it was done with dignity and respect. “If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t be here,” he said.
His cousins agreed.
“These people are not forgotten, and they’re not abandoned,” Stephens-Webb said. “We are very much still connected to this family.”
Wyatt pointed in succession at a couple of the few graves marked with headstones. “I’ve got her pocket watch, I’ve got her ring,” she said.
In his 30 years as a developer, Gallagher said he’s never relocated graves for a project.
“However, I’ve had probably six to 10 developments where we had cemeteries,” he said. In each of those, the project has been able to work around the cemetery, sometimes putting up markers around its perimeter, he said.
He said he’s not aware of any other historic cemeteries on the parcel where the data center will be built.
A continuing conversation
Pittsylvania County is likely to see questions about old cemeteries crop up more often as it continues to attract development, Green said.
The issue of historic and slave cemeteries also arose during community meetings for a second data center project in the county, which has been withdrawn from consideration for now. Enslaved people are buried on the land that Herndon-based company Balico wanted to buy for this facility, residents said.
“In those kinds of areas where land use is changing quickly and in ways that may not be conducive to preservation in place, you do see a lot more work going on that involves cemeteries,” Green said.
This means the county should anticipate some difficult conversations. The current situations will hopefully be a learning experience for the future, but “it should never be easy” to merge historic cemeteries and development, Green said.
“This is not something that we should just wade into thinking, ‘I can snap my fingers and this cemetery will no longer be a problem for me,’” she said. “It should be hard, it should be a challenge, and we should be ready for folks to be upset and angry. Space needs to be made for that kind of discussion because it’s an absolutely legitimate response.”