White Rock Hill, Lynchburg
- White Rock Hill is bounded by Florida Avenue, the James River, and Fishing Creek. A well-known landmark of an outcropping of white quartz rock along the bluff of the James River is the geniuses of the neighborhood’s name. Part of the hill was incorporated into the city in 1870. Steep hillsides made development difficult so the area was not fully annexed into the city until 1908.
- White Rock Cemetery founded by Jackson Street Methodist Church as Lynchburg’s first independent black cemetery. William Kent, on March 12, 1882 was the first person buried in the cemetery and the remains of 3,000 to 5,000 souls are estimated to reside within its borders. Some of the more well-known people to be buried there are Dr. Kyle Pettis, who practiced medicine in Lynchburg for more than 50 years; Dr. Frank P. Lewis, who was on the faculty of Virginia Seminary; Thomas Jefferson Anderson, one of the first two black city councilmen elected in Lynchburg during the 1880s; and Ota Benga, the African pygmy who was displayed in a Zoo primate exhibit in 1906 and made Lynchburg his home later in life.
- White Rock Cemetery is on a 21-acre downhill slope, leading to fishing creek which meanders its way to the James River. The once well cared for cemetery fell into disrepair as the souls buried there passed into forgotten history. Trees had burst through the centers of family plots, beautifully designed brick boarders had broken and tumbled into disarray, massive spider webs cover the seldom visited areas and headstones broken and lying amongst the dirt and weeds. In 1998, a local woman Laura Munson who stumbled upon the cemetery during a walk and felt dismay at the deplorable condition of the historic Cemetery asked the Jackson Street Methodist Church to allow her to restore it. Within a decade, Munson and volunteers filled in sunken graves, reset headstones, repaired bricks and cinder blocks in family plots and restored the grounds. Munson spent a little more than 10 years restoring and keeping the cemetery grounds groomed and then turned responsibility for its care back over to the church.
The Group of Men Recruited by Verner
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Ota Benga at the Bronx Zoo
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White Rock Hill Rails Near Fishing Creek
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- Ota Benga (1883 – March 20, 1916) was a Congolese Mbuti pygmy man who was purchased from slave traders, in 1904, for a pound of salt and a blot of cloth by explorer Samuel Phillips Verner. Samuel Phillips Verner travelled to Africa under contract from the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (St. Louis World Fair) to bring back an assortment of pygmies to be part of an exhibition in the discipline of anthropology. With Benga’s help he was able to recruit 4 Batwa, all male, to join them. Vener also recruited other Africans who were not pygmies. All Africans were returned to Africa after the end of the Exposition except for Benga who, after travelling with Verner on other expeditions, chose to return with Verner to the USA. However, Benga became disaffected after a few years of being exhibited in the Bronx Zoo’s Monkey House, without any sort of freedom of life choices, and only found relief after a delegation of black churches petitioned his release. Benga, eventually, was sent to be cared for in Virginia where he was tutored in English and then began to work at a tobacco plant. Wishing to return home several years later, but unable to do so because of the outbreak of World War 1, he committed suicide in 1916 at the age of 32.
- The White Rock Cemetery is an interesting place to visit and should you wind up visiting the Graveyard an understanding of some of the souls buried there can only add to its mystique and enjoyment.