Francis Marion University working with group to preserve Florence slave cemetery

FLORENCE, S.C. (WBTW) — One of South Carolina’s oldest slave cemeteries could remain undisturbed from future development, thanks to a collaboration between Francis Marion University and an area preservation group.

“I am overjoyed that we have come together to show respect for the souls that once walked this earth, just as we are today,” Vivian Guyton, vice president of the Roseville Plantation Slave and Freedman’s Cemetery Committee, said in a statement.

Guyton’s great-grandmother Minverva Cato Brockington was a Roseville Plantation slave.

“We live in a time when it is easy to use history as a divisive tool. However, I believe that if we have a genuine commitment to the betterment of all society, then we can study history with toward better understanding people,” Guyton said.

Located in a wooded area just mile from the main plantation house off Old Williston Road in Florence, historians estimate more than 250 have been buried there between 1770 and the 1970s.

A committee made up of slave and freedmen’s descendants, current property owners and a genealogist are working with FMU to protect the parcel.

Among those laid to rest at Roseville Plantation’s cemetery is 98-year-old “Old Father Adam” Brockington, who died in 1854.

The plantation — which at one point encompassed 1,200 acres — was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.

In 2021, News13 attended the site’s 250th anniversary attended by descendants both of its owners and the enslaved people who worked the land.

Rick Wilson, president of the cemetery preservation group, said it hopes to work with nearby churches and other organizations to best honor those interred.

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Adam Benson joined the News13 digital team in January 2024. He is a veteran South Carolina reporter with previous stops at the Greenwood Index-Journal, Post & Courier and The Sun News in Myrtle Beach. Adam is a Boston native and University of Utah graduate. Follow Adam on X, formerly Twitter, at @AdamNewshound12 . See more of his work here .

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