Mission restores Wahoo cemetery

By NIKKI YOUNG The Times Headstones decapitated by fallen trees lay next to sunken graves, the owners' names barely readable by running a finger across the handcarved letters. Yet a bouquet of white silk flowers miraculously survives in the Wahoo cemetery dirt. A small clapboard church, Wahoo Baptist, once stood across from the fire station on Nancy Creek Road, just outside the Gainesville city limits. A prominent landowner deeded the land to freed slaves in 1876. With the church long gone, a new mission took up the responsibility of tending the cemetery. Anderson Flen found the debilitated Wahoo cemetery a couple of years ago. As chairman of Gainesville's Restoration and Preservation Mission, Flen put Wahoo on his list of burial sites in sore need of attention. Then he waited. Now, some funding is available to clear the trees and restore more than 100 African-American graves that date back to the early 1800s. The mission still lacks the $10,000 necessary to clean up the entire lot and hire an archaeologist to oversee the restoration. A tree service started the dig on Monday, and Hall County sent a prison detail to help haul limbs on Wednesday. Full Story: http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/news/stories/20050520/localnews/105179.shtml