Work to restore a centuries-old historic burial ground in Johnson’s Ghut is underway.

Efforts to restore the burial ground began in 2001.

“Our objective is to restore the Planter’s Burial Ground and develop it into a historical site for the BVI,” said Xandra Adamson, a member of the committee managing the project. “We see the burial ground as a link to the past; an avenue through which the BVI as a whole can better understand its history,” she said.

The restoration project is bringing a welcome sense of order to the burial ground which serves as the final resting place for some Planters and their families of the 18th and 19th centuries. Markers which had been reduced to piles of bricks, shattered headstones, and crumbling mausoleums are being rebuilt and now stand erect under the shade trees which grow in the cemetery.

Donations from the Premier’s Office, VP Bank and Harneys are financing the restoration project but Mrs Adamson said that unless additional donations are received the project will have to shut down soon. “If we manage to obtain a bit more funding it will go beyond the present date but at the moment we have to stop before restoring all the graves due to lack of funds,” she said.

Efforts to restore the burial ground began in 2001, when a group of concerned residents including Osmon, Adamson, Mrs. Jennie Wheatley and Ms. Ermin Penn decided to organize a clean-up.

The cemetery was in a bad state, having been overgrown, neglected and vandalized for decades. The grand iron gates which once marked its entrance were removed, possibly as scrap metal for the war effort in the 1940s; bricks were taken for ovens; and marauders opened some graves on a misguided hunt for treasure. A thicket of vines and bush grew up around the graves rendering the site practically invisible to the casual passerby.

After the initial clearing out, the stone wall surrounding the site was repaired and a new gate installed to prevent roaming livestock from causing further damage. And, with the help of volunteers, the gravestones were catalogued.

The research revealed 29 marked graves, dating from 1760 to 1838. They include prominent residents such as Mary Purcell, the wife of Lieutenant Governor John Purcell; Mary Hunt, the wife of the second Governor of the Virgin Islands, John Hunt; and William Crabb, who along with William Roger Isaac served as representative for Reid Irving and Company, the firm which managed most of the encumbered estates on Tortola following emancipation.

The names of those persons interred will sound familiar to modern residents of Tortola: Blyden, Bruley, Cox, Crabb, Hodge, Molineux, Nibbs, Phillips, Smith, Turnbull. Others appeared to be just passing through: there are gravestones memorialising Rev. Terence McDonnell of St. John who died in 1775, Brigadier Gen. Robert Sparrow who died on his way between Barbados and England in 1805; and Jacob Townsend of New York who died in 1772.

Eventually, advocates would like to see research undertaken to discover and record the stories of people buried in the cemetery. But it’s one step at a time for the this group of persistent historic preservationists, who are now focussed on finishing the job of restoration.