Cemetery in Taylor's Field

The first time I remember going to the old graveyard in Taylor's field was in the late 50's and even then it looked like it had been abandoned for sometime. It was in the edge of the woods on a hill just past the field that was used for farming back then. At one time there was a dirt road that ran near the cemetery, you can see it on old aerial photos of the area. It was located about what would be 2 city blocks east of Live Oak Avenue (now Covil) between Market Street and the ACL railroad tracks. Now the city has allowed HUD apartments to be built on most of what was the graveyard, but a small portion has been set aside with a marker. The marker says there are 10 unmarked graves there. As best I can remember there were still more headstones than that in early 70s but that would be hard to prove without photos. I remember many obvious grave sites that had sunken in over the years. some without headstones to mark the graves. What the city has marked off as what was the cemetery is less than half of what was there when I was a kid in the 50's. This is the same cemetery that was know as the Indian Burial Grounds and Skipper Graveyard. I have no idea what the real name is. I doubt that any Indians were ever buried there. That name probably came about because of its location in the woods and that made it more interesting to the children that played in those woods.

The Picture above shows the cemetery as it looks today (May 2006). To the left is what the city claims was the entire cemetery, to right where the apartment sits is the half that was dug up to make room for the apartment. There were several remains dug in the process of building the apartments. At the back of the photo there is a wood fence hiding a parking lot of more apartments. The best that I can remember there would have been graves there also. As with Saint Mary's Place on Market Street and 16th and 17th Street extensions in the 1960s and Seagate in the 70s a little thing like someone's final resting place did not stop people from making money by building on a cemetery in New Hanover County.