Our Unique Stories

evans cemetery

The Evans Cemetery is an African American community burial ground rooted in the traditions of the families who lived south of Newton in the Bethel, Altare, St. John, and Mt. Moriah communities. More than a place of rest, the cemetery stands as a living archive of the region’s Black heritage, preserving over a century of interconnected family histories.

Many of the individuals laid to rest here descend from enslaved families once held by Catherine Evans and neighboring planters. Their descendants—Evans, Chapman, Mosley, Rigsby, Wesley, Gibson, Walker, and others—continued to anchor this rural community through Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, the Great Migration, and into the modern day. The cemetery reflects this remarkable continuity, with many family lines represented across four or five generations.

The biographies reveal a community shaped by faith, labor, and service. Among those buried here are founding members and supporters of Altare Missionary Baptist Church, Mt. Moriah, Pilgrim Grove Presbyterian, and St. John; veterans of World Wars I and II; farmers, midwives, schoolchildren, and community leaders whose labor sustained the rural South. The cemetery also bears witness to the hardships of earlier decades, including high child mortality and the struggles of life in segregated Mississippi.

The oldest recorded grave belongs to Josephine Wesley, who died in 1887, marking the beginning of more than 135 years of remembrance. Today, the Evans Cemetery stands as a testament to resilience, kinship, and identity—an enduring record of the African American families who shaped this corner of Newton County.

See also: Faith, Kinship and Memory – The Evans Cemetery

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list of individuals laid to rest at this gravesite