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Chesnutt's Family Burial Sites Both of Chesnutt's parents were freeborn of mixed racial ancestry. Charles' father, Andrew Jackson Chesnutt, was the son of Waddell Cade, a wealthy white tobacco farmer, who was also a slaveholder, who had two distinct sets of children: one by his late wife, and one by Ann Chesnutt, his freeborn housekeeper. Cade was apparently devoted to Ann Chesnutt and supported her children, but social custom did not permit him to marry her. In 1856, Andrew Chesnutt joined other freeborn blacks in the region who headed for Ohio in hopes of finding better opportunities. During this trip north, Chesnutt met Anna Maria, and the two were married once they arrived in Ohio. Charles was born in 1858. After the Civil War broke out, Andrew volunteered to fight in the Union Army, and after some difficulty in being admitted, did serve for several years. In 1865, as the war was coming to an end, Andrew Chesnutt found himself near Fayetteville. He visited his father Waddell Cade, who urged his son to return home, saying that he would help him open a grocery store. Assuming that conditions would be better with the end of the war, Andrew sent for his wife and son. The family moved into a house on C Street, which was provided by Cade, and was the model for the house in The House Behind the Cedars. Andrew opened his store on Gillespie Street where Charles worked as a young boy. After Andrew had to close the store in 1872, the family moved to a farm in the Wilmington Road area, a section of town that seems similar to the fictional site of the "goophered grapevine." Andrew Jackson Chesnutt is buried in the Cross Creek cemetery , along with some of the other family members. (Click here for gravesite.) Anne Chesnutt Middle School in Fayetteville is named for Anne Chesnutt Waddell. His sister Sarah Chesnutt was a teacher in Fayetteville for many years. Mary Ochiltree Chesnutt was Andrew Chesnutt's second wife. In several of Chesnutt's works, cemeteries serve as a vivid reminder of the color line. In one of Chesnutt's short stories, "The Bouquet," set in Patesville, a young Black girl wishes to place a bouquet of flowers on the grave of her school teacher who has just died. She is prevented from doing so because the graveyard is "for whites only." The girl achieves her aim when she enlists the help of the dead teacher's dog which is resting on the grave. Ironically, the dog, but not the child, is allowed into the graveyard. As stated earlier, the Clarendon of The Colonel's Dream bears some general similarities with Fayetteville. The climax of the novel revolves around the "whites only" Oak Cemetery in Clarendon, where all of the Colonel's family members are buried. In the novel, when the old family servant, Peter, dies trying, though unsuccessfully, to save the Colonel's son from being crushed by a train, Colonel French wants to bury Peter along with his own son in the old family plot. Such a wish violates the customs of the people of Claredon. This enslavement of the people of Clarendon to the dead ideas of the past, symbolized by the cemetery, serves to defeat the Colonel's efforts to bring about reform. (Click here for gravesite.) We cannot say with certainty that Chesnutt was remembering this specific graveyard when he wrote either of these works. But, certainly he knew the oldest portion of this cemetery across the street which is an all white cemetery. Oak Cemetery in The Colonel's Dream like the one across the street was located near a mill and a stream. This cemetery, in which Chesnutt's family members are buried, consisted of two distinct cemeteries, one for whites and one for blacks, and a hedge separated the two sections. It is reasonable to conclude that Chesnutt's experiences with this area influenced his fictional depictions of burials. |