RE: Birmingham AL Cemetery reords
Thought this might help some of you with relatives that might have lived in Alabama.
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Paupers' cemetery records posted - Monday - Mar 13, 2006
WALTER BRYANT-News staff writer
The Birmingham Public Library has posted to its Web site the records of a paupers' cemetery that operated in the late 1800s and early 1900s on land now occupied by the Birmingham Zoo.
The database includes the names, ages, races, years of death and causes of death of 4,711 people buried in the Red Mountain Cemetery. It is a trove of information for genealogists, historians and students of public health, a library official said.
Records show that more than 4,000 of the burials were of black people, 367 were white, and the rest were mixed or other races. "These were the poor, who were more susceptible to diseases," said Jim Baggett, the library's archivist. His Department of Archives and Manuscripts is custodian of the cemetery's record book.
The cemetery operated from 1888 until 1906 when it was replaced by a newer pauper's cemetery in Ketona near Tarrant. Among the causes of death by disease were 351 from pneumonia, 263 from tuberculosis, 145 from dysentery, 53 from meningitis and 44 from bronchitis.
Accidental deaths included being knocked from a bridge or being hit by streetcars or trains. Eight people were stabbed to death and at least 160 were shot to death. Other causes included spasms, old age, died suddenly and "killed by her husband."
Records show 131 premature births and 615 stillbirths. "It confirms a high infant mortality," Baggett said. The records are posted at
More than two decades passed between the last burial and the land becoming a city park. A 1934 newspaper clipping in the library's archives shows that the Birmingham City Commission named the 200-acre tract in honor of former Mayor A.O. Lane. Previously it had been known as Red Mountain Park.
Twenty years later, 50 acres were set aside for a zoo. The first official exhibit, Monkey Island, was dedicated in 1955. Baggett said cemeteries have sometimes been seen as more than burial grounds. In the early 1900s, people would visit cemeteries for Sunday outings and picnics. This partially blurred the distinction between burial grounds and parks.
Complicating the fate of the paupers' graves in Red Mountain Cemetery is that no map has been found that pinpoints who was buried where. Even the exact boundaries of the cemetery cannot be established. The graves were never moved. Baggett said the lack of tombstones and cemetery maps can present problems for abandoned cemeteries.
He said pioneer families settled in Jones Valley many years before Birmingham was established. Pioneer cemeteries tended to be small and used by a few families. Tombstones were expensive, so graves might be indicated by an uncarved stone or a wooden marker that eventually disintegrated. Eventually, some of these early cemeteries were abandoned, overgrown and forgotten.
"If there's no one left to care for a cemetery, and there's no one to protest, the land can become valuable for something else," he said.
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