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Joyce Mosley stands in Eden Cemetery on Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2020. Mosely believes she has nearly 100 relatives buried at Eden. (Ryan Collerd for PlanPhilly)
Google “Eden Cemetery” and you’re bound to encounter an impressive list of influential Black Philadelphians laid to rest there. Absalom Jones, Marian Anderson, Octavius Catto, Julian Abele, Frances Harper, and William Still are a few of the well-known figures who come up.
But Eden’s story is larger than its “notables.” Its very existence was shaped by segregation and the fight for civil rights, a history legible in its archival documents, material culture, and physical design, if you know how to read them.
WILMINGTON – Thumb through any local historian’s personal library and you’re likely to find a dog-eared, well-worn copy of Beverly Tetterton’s book, “Wilmington: Lost but Not Forgotten.”
A guide to the built history that defined Wilmington but fell victim to its progress and time, the book is an essential text on this region from its most essential historical voice of the last quarter century.
As the former special collections librarian and chief of the New Hanover County Library’s North Carolina Room, Tetterton has brought history to the masses in a way her predecessors didn’t. The likes of celebrated historians James Sprunt and Louis T. Moore preserved the Cape Fear’s stories in written accounts that have served as the backbone of local research for 100 years.