Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 2 · column 5 of 7 · from the scan, no model involved
Lawson family
cemetery
The cemetery in question, which Hamilton calls “the old Lawson family cemetery,” is located among a cluster of trees just off Rt.621. Hamilton’s ancestors were a prominent black family in the Rappahannock and Culpeper area, and the cemetery and the land surrounding it were once part of a family farm that has been passed down in Hamilton’s family for several generations.
“Over the years, greedy relatives have been selling off pieces of the land to make money, and now it’s mostly gone,” Hamilton told the Rappahannock News.
The 38 by 40 foot cemetery sits on Rodgers’ land, surrounded by ground that has been cleared by a bulldozer as the site of a future house. The burial ground is surrounded by an old wooden fence that is in the process of falling down, and the cemetery itself is clogged with undergrowth. Hamilton’s forebears have been buried there as long as they have been in Rappahannock County, and many died too poor to afford a gravestone. Most of those buried in the Lawson cemetery are marked only with a rough stone marker, or even a plain rock. The only actual tombstones still standing in the cemetery were put there by Dr. Hamilton in the last decade, to mark his parents and grandfather.
94.1%