I have lived in Tarpon Springs for years, off and on and I am always finding new places to explore. Love the history and spooky factor that comes with cemeteries and The Rose Cemetery did not disappoint. From learning about the early Bahamian population in Tarpon Springs to finding the grave of Christopher Columbus, and the grave of the man who was buried with his bed frame… this spot was full of surprises.
Rose Cemetery – Since the 1800’s
“Originally known as Rose Hill Cemetery, the 4.63-acre burial ground has over 1,000 graves. Once owned by the Lake Butler Villa Company, the property is adjacent to the formerly whites-only Cycadia Cemetery, which is owned by the city of Tarpon Springs. Lake Butler deeded the land to the Rose Hill Association in 1917, according to Tina Bucuvalas, the city’s historical curator.
“The earliest recorded burial dates to 1904, but it has believed to have been used by black community members to bury their dead since the 1870s,” Bucuvalas wrote in successfully seeking to have Rose Cemetery included in the National Register of Historic Places.” source
“”This city was founded early on by both white and black populations and a few Hispanics,” she said. “The Greeks came in later. African-Americans have always been an integral part of the community.”
Many graves are marked with conch shells, reflective of the earliest black populations in Tarpon Springs, she said, which were largely Bahamian and familiar with the sponging industry. Though the Greeks are known for bringing sponge diving to Tarpon Springs, the Bahamian populations were hooking sponges earlier.
Jim Schnur, a special collections librarian and historian at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, said unlike other black cemeteries in the area, Rose may be one of the first at a single site, where bodies have not had to be disinterred or relocated.
“Rose Cemetery is a cultural treasure during a time of segregation that served a community that has an important part in Pinellas history,” he said. “The cemetery came about when separate but equal was law, but separate but unequal was practice.”
“Schnur said the ethnic make up of Tarpon Springs included Southern whites, African-Americans, Afro-Bahamians, white Bahamians and Mediterranean Greeks among others. Much of the black population, he said grew up speaking Greek, early on.
“When the Greeks came, the Greeks and blacks worked together for the early part of the century,” Bucuvalas said. “Greeks were not considered white either. This community is not without prejudice, but perhaps less so than others.”” source
“Richard Quarls or Christopher Columbus was a slave, said 87-year-old Alfred Quarterman, president of the Rose Hill Cemetery Association, which has managed the site where African-Americans have been buried for more than a century. His master’s name was Richard Quarls, so when he went to fight in the Civil War for the Confederate army, that was the name he adopted. During the war, Quarls lost a leg. He found his way to Tarpon Springs and collected a pension until his death in 1910, Quarterman said. Christopher Columbus was the only other name he knew aside from his slave master’s, so he went by that too.” source
“..the iron bed frame of Morris Lofton, a man who died in 1910 and traveled everywhere by mule with his only possession, sticks out of the ground where it was buried with him.” source
Auryn even found a ball. BONUS!
