Abandoned Ontario cemetery with graves of Black settlers to be restored after campaign by local advocates

An abandoned cemetery southeast of Hamilton, Ont., which is the final resting place for Black settlers — including the niece of a famed anti-slavery icon — will soon be restored thanks to some local volunteers and county councillors.

People who escaped slavery in the United States are buried at the Street-Barnes Cemetery, tucked away in a copse of trees in the middle of a field. No one’s been buried there since the 1940s, and the 500-square-metre site is now littered with overturned tombstones, unkempt brush, dead trees and tangles of old fence wire. 

Sylvia Weaver, a local historian and author, says at least a dozen people are buried in the cemetery,