Last updated: August 27, 2021
Place
The Stone Family Cemetery
NPS image
Quick Facts
Location:
6655 Rose Hill Road Port Tobacco, MD 20677
Significance:
Family burial ground of a signer of the Declaration of Independence
Designation:
National Historic Site
One of the most prominent features of the landscape at Thomas Stone National Historic Site is the Stone Family Cemetery. The cemetery has nine burials inside its fenced-in area. The earliest burials date to 1787, when Margaret and Thomas Stone died within four months of each other. The last burial occurred in 1913, when one of the last Stone owners of the property, Margaret Graham Stone, died. Six other markers of extended Stone family members who died between 1841-1873, including two children, are also there.
Outside of the fenced-in area, arranged in a rectangular pattern are four small stone markers. Oral tradition states that the stones mark a separate cemetery, a cemetery comprised of the enslaved who died in bondage and were buried next to the family cemetery. When the Stones sold the property in 1936, they put a stipulation in the sales contract that permitted one future burial, that of a former enslaved person, in the area outside the fence, but no burials inside. A Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) study done here shows evidence of 19 burial shafts in this area but does not indicate how many people are actually buried in this location, nor if they were burials of enslaved persons.
This theory is problematic, however. In the Chesapeake region, enslaved people were rarely laid to rest near those who claimed ownership over them. It was more common for the enslaved to have their own burial grounds near their quarters or in undeveloped ground close by.
Do these four stones outline an enslaved cemetery, or an extended cemetery for other Stone family members who did not reside here? More research needs to be conducted before the answers can be revealed.