Laurel Cemetery was a former African-Americancemetery in Baltimore, Maryland. For over one hundred years, the cemetery became the final resting place of thousands of citizens from Maryland's African-American community. After falling into disrepair, the cemetery land was purchased by developers and a shopping center was built overtop.
In 1851, land was purchased from Thomas Burgan Jr. for use as a cemetery.[1][2] Laurel Cemetery was incorporated shortly thereafter as the first nondenominational cemetery for African-Americans in Baltimore.[3][4] By 1881, the cemetery covered 28 acres.[5] That year, the cemetery was badly damaged when a cyclone hit Baltimore during the 1881 Atlantic hurricane season.[6]
Throughout the 1880s, the cemetery was the site of a series of notable grave-robbing incidents conducted by several of the cemetery's grave diggers.[7][8] By the 1920s, the cemetery began to fall into disrepair.[9] In 1958, the site was purchased by a developer despite objections from the community.[10][11] When developers bought the site, the remains of the cemetery's residents were to be moved. Later research found that developers largely did not comply with requirements to relocate the remains.[12][13] It is estimated that the remains of between 18,000 and 40,000 internments at Laurel Cemetery remain under the Belair Edison Crossing Shopping center that now occupies the site.[9][14]
Laurel Cemetery Project
In 2014, professors from the University of Baltimore and Coppin State University created the Laurel Cemetery Project to teach students about cultural resource management, history, archaeology, and environmental sustainability by undertaking work at the site.[15][14] Anthropologists undertaking work at the site, have since discovered human remains, headstones and other funerary materials on the site of the former cemetery.[16][17]
George William Commodore, born free in Baltimore in 1825, served in the US Navy during the American Civil War and interred in Laurel Cemetery in 1885
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