The planters burial ground in Johnsons Ghut looks very different than it did a year ago.
A sign at the entrance reads, “Please close the gate,” but thick vines make that action nearly impossible. Within the cemetery, vegetation obscures some graves entirely, while chunks of the exterior stone wall have caved in.
For nearly 18 years, volunteers have been maintaining the site — even completely building back some of the crumbling tombs — but last year the necessary funds dried up.
After Hurricane Irma, the importance of the cemetery has gradually come back into focus, and the task of clearing brush and repairing graves is back on the agenda for a small group of Tortola residents.
One of them, Xandra Adamson, is a particularly dedicated caretaker of the burial ground. For two decades she’s saved photos, newspaper clippings and detailed notes about the site and those who are buried there: dozens of plantation owners and other individuals who died between 1666 and 1834.
“The cemetery has become overgrown and so many historically important sites in the BVI have suffered badly with Irma,” Ms. Adamson said, holding a chart created by another volunteer years ago that shows where each tombstone is located and who it belongs to. “If I let these out of my hands, [the archive of information] would just be dispersed and we wouldn’t know where anything was.”
Three core members of the Millennium Committee — Ms. Adamson, Ermin Penn and Jennie Wheatley — began the renovation of several historical sites after the turn of the century.
In 2001, their attention turned to the planters burial ground. Along with the Virgin Islands Studies Department at H. Lavity Stoutt Community College and Caribbean Volunteer Expeditions, the group cut down grass and weeds and sorted through stones and rubble.
Several years later, architect Jon Osman helped repair the badly damaged graves.
“Some of them were empty, balancing on either end and collapsed and, you know, those are all someone’s graves,” Ms. Adamson said.
Fading inscriptions on the tombstones also reveal a little bit about what life was like before emancipation — and the type of planter class that was buried in this spot.
“Underneath this stone lies Ann Ronan, grandmother to Mr. William Ronan Hodge who departed her life Nov. 5th, 1792 on her eightieth year of her age,” one inscription reads. “She was an affectionate wife, a tender parent, sincere friend and indulgent mistress to her slaves.”
As Dr. Mitch Kent, historian at the VI Studies Institute, wrote in an original report about the restoration of the site: The burial ground was much “grander” than others because “it was only used to inter the elite of colonial BVI society.”
Plans for the future
In the coming months, members of the Millennium Committee plan further repair work on the site and will again arrange to cut back brush and possibly repair inscriptions on the graves.
Ms. Adamson hopes that the burial ground will give tourists a broader sense of the territory’s complex history — and become another valuable spot to visit during their trip.
“After Irma, there are fewer sites for the visitors to visit and at least this one has not been completely destroyed as so many have,” she said. “We can tidy it up and make it an area that people perhaps want to go and visit again.”