EDITOR’S NOTE: Everyone has a story — some more well-known than others. Across Western North Carolina, so much history is buried below the surface. Six feet under. With this series, we introduce you to some of the people who have left marks big and small on this special place we call home.
The remains of two bodies, likely dating back to the late nineteenth century, were discovered on Jun. 16, 2023, after a decades long search for the missing Wilson Chapel AME Church cemetery in West Asheville. Construction in the vicinity of the graveyard threatens to prevent the creation of a memorial for the men and women buried there.
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It has been over 500 days since the discovery that changed her life. Since then, her finding has remained unceremoniously a tarp.
Conda Painter, a local historian who operates the West Asheville History Museum at 727 Haywood Road, spent almost half of a century searching for a cemetery only for it to turn up in an active construction site.
In 2021, Roveen Enterprise began demolishing a car wash which had once stood at 680 Haywood Road. As the construction crew prepared to erect the new building, their work was sharply halted in May 2023.
Shortly thereafter, Painter’s lifelong dream came true. The Wilson Chapel AME cemetery had been found.
Wilson Chapel AME Church
In 1925, the members of Wilson Chapel AME, a now defunct congregation, elected to move to a different building for their gatherings.
At their former Haywood Road sanctuary, there were “100 graves to start out with,” Painter said, referencing a newspaper from the late 1800’s. Most of the burials were “moved to Green Hills Cemetery” when the congregation left the area.
Facing financial hardships, Wilson Chapel AME was unable to pay to have all the bodies exhumed and relocated. Nearly 100 years after the move, nobody was alive who had seen the old church graveyard, leaving Painter with few leads to its whereabouts.
Her interest in the seemingly mythical cemetery began in her teenage years as she retells it.
“A neighbor,” who used to invite Painter and the other neighborhood kids over for storytelling, “she was pretty old, probably 89, 87 or 89 years old, said, ‘You know, I heard a rumor there used to be a cemetery in this neighborhood, but I don’t remember where,’” Painter recalled, as previously reported by 828newsNOW.
Along with her father, the West Asheville historian said, “We spent many, many years putting the pieces together.”
Rediscovered Cemetery
When construction began near 650 Haywood Road, Painter was able to drum up enough grassroots support on Facebook to have the city halt the project until N.C. State Archeologist Tasha Benyshek could survey the area for the long-lost burial ground.
Six weeks went by of searching.
“And I said if you go back a little bit further,” Painter insisted with the archeologist. “And they said they were almost at the edge of the property. But they went back a little further, and they found two graves with bodies.”
The discovery of two sets of bodily remains on Jun. 16, 2023, was monumental for Painter, although she was equally grieved that her deceased father could not share in the joy of the find.
From her decades of research, Painter has concluded that the burials at the churchyard could date back to as early as 1883. There are more graves underneath an adjacent parking lot owned by the defunct West Asheville Presbyterian Church, she claims.
“The [Presbyterian] church owns that parking lot, but now there’s talk that the church could donate the property to where they could turn it into a memorial park,” Painter told the Daily Planet.
A tarp was laid over the graves to demarcate their location and protect them from damage. A retaining wall was supposed to be erected before further construction as a more permanent solution.
That was a year and a half ago.
Heavy Machinery in the Graveyard
Ever since the 2023 discovery, the bodies have laid under the same black tarp as thousands of cars pass by each day on one of the busiest roads in Asheville. Even though the retaining wall has not yet been installed, construction has resumed on the plot. People still park their cars on the dilapidated parking lot atop an unknown number of buried African Americans and no progress toward a memorial park has been made.
“We’re still waiting on the retaining wall,” Painter explained, saying the City of Asheville has jurisdiction over the burial grounds. She advocates for the wall “To protect people from sleeping there.”
“It’s really important to me that we get some kind of memorial so that these people are remembered,” Painter concluded. She is fighting to prevent the cemetery she rediscovered from becoming re-lost.
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