Details emerges about more Danville slave cemeteries

DANVILLE, Va. - Two descendants of the Hairston family say they have seen another cemetery - in addition to the one disclosed last week - at the former Oak Hill Plantation off Berry Hill Road.

Dean and Will Hairston say they found a plot about five years ago that sits on a bluff and has about 90 graves. About three of the graves have marked stones, while most of the remainder of the graves have unmarked rocks, Dean said during an interview Tuesday.

“There are other slave cemeteries throughout that property,“ Dean Hairston, a major with the Danville Police Department, said. Hairston’s great-great grandfather, Major Lewis Hairston, was born in 1835 and was a slave at Oak Hill.

William Gosnell, a Dry Fork resident who has studied the area’s history, discovered the other 200-plot graveyard about a decade ago when a descendant of the Hairston homestead - the name of the old property - asked him to conduct a study of the site to find Native American and European artifacts. Gosnell has declined to reveal the cemetery’s location to protect it from grave robbers and pillagers, he said. Pittsylvania County officials say an archaeological survey will reveal more about the cemetery at the proposed Berry Hill industrial mega park site.

Pittsylvania County officials say the isolated site will be fenced off and protected from looters and from damage resulting from development in the 3,400-acre park. The Berry Hill Road industrial mega park is a joint project between Pittsylvania County and Danville. Officials hope to attract large-scale industry to the property along Berry Hill Road. The county already has two other cemeteries it maintains - one behind Yates Tavern in Gretna and another at Turkeycock Mountain in Callands.

Dean Hairston said he isn’t sure whether the cemetery he and his brother visited is actually on the property that will be used for the proposed Berry Hill Road mega park site. But he said there is also a separate cemetery in the area where whites are buried. Hairston said he began seeking information about the property in the mid-80s and took photos of the 1820s-built plantation house before it burned down in 1988.

Will Hairston, a great-great-great grandson of Sam Hairston, the slave owner who built the plantation house, said stumbling upon the cemetery “was a powerful moment.“ Will, who lives in Harrisonburg, said Sam Hairston had about 5,500 slaves on about 40 plantation sites in Virginia, North Carolina and Mississippi in the mid-19th century, according to a conservative estimate from his research.

“During that period, that was the epitome of a profitable tobacco-slave empire,“ said Will, a grounds supervisor at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg.

Will said he doesn’t know the exact size of the former Oak Hill Plantation, but said it totaled thousands of acres.

Since the 1970s, the Hairstons have held family reunions bringing blacks and whites from the family together, Will said.

“There is a legacy of injustice,“ he said, “but there’s (also) a legacy of reconciliation.“

Will said he is supportive of the Berry Hill industrial mega park proposal, because he’s aware of the high unemployment here and Southside’s need for economic development. Dean pointed to the cemeteries as final resting places that are unique and should be recognized and learned from.

“I say do it in a way that respects the past,“ Dean said of area officials’ plans for the Berry Hill Road mega park.

“It’s a lesson there for all people,“ he said of the property and the cemeteries.