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Lanier Slave Cemetery, 46-2 Summary Report, page 3
Lanier Cemetery 46-2, Redstone Arsenal, Madison Co. AL, Jan. 28, 2003
The above view is from the southwestern corner of the cemetery, looking toward the east, across the leaf-covered southern portion of the burial ground.
Since there are no tombstones, land records provide the best way to check on the likely owners of the assumed slave cemetery. Of course, only records up to the time of the Civil War would shed any light upon the slave owners, but the cemetery could well have continued in use by the emancipated former slaves. Many would probably wish to be buried near their parents and grandparents on the “old place”, even after being freed, assuming that they continued to stay in the area. Since most freed blacks lacked the funds to travel and buy land elsewhere, they did in fact stay and enter into sharecropping agreements with the legal landowners until they could afford to purchase their own properties.
3 - (1986)