River Road Moses Cemetery site, Bethesda, Maryland.

The results of research into the history of Bethesda, Maryland’s River Road Moses Cemetery are presented in this report first released to the dispersed descendant community and government agencies in Montgomery County, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. Now that all of the known stakeholders have a copy of the report, I am releasing it to the general public.

Some key findings presented in the report and deriving from the research:

• The cemetery was never affiliated with the Macedonia Baptist Church. Though the Bethesda congregation has taken the lead on advocating for the cemetery and it is demanding that Montgomery County “give it back” to the congregation, the cemetery had little in common with the church beyond spatial proximity. Furthermore, in my attempts to get historical information from the church’s former pastor, he repeatedly attempted to dissuade me from writing about the church by asserting that the church and cemetery were never related. Throughout its entire history, the River Road Moses Cemetery appears to have been closely affiliated with Rock Creek Baptist Church, a congregation founded in 1872 in Washington’s Tenleytown neighborhood and which was displaced in the early 20th century.
• The cemetery appears to have been active for a much more limited time (c. 1912-1935) than initially believed (1912-1958).
• There are likely substantially fewer burials that activists claim. The one-acre tract could have accommodated as many as 800 to 1,000 burials, yet because of the population served and the limited time that the cemetery was active, it is likely that the number of people buried there is substantially less than the 500 claimed by Bethesda activists.
• The cemetery remained a fully owned and operated satellite of a Washington-based benevolent organization. Though there are significant historical ties linking the cemetery to the River Road community, they were mainly because of spatial proximity and not necessarily because it was a “community cemetery.” As a result, it is likely that more Washington residents were buried in the cemetery than Montgomery County residents.
• The cemetery and community’s history expose a pattern of anti-Black land use policies that created serial displacement in Northwest Washington in the first decade of the 20th century and which continued as displaced DC residents moved to River Road and were displaced between c. 1935 and 1960. The serial displacement throughline continues today with gentrification in the District and Montgomery County and with Montgomery County’s efforts to “retrofit” its suburbs.
• The research identified a Washington cemetery (in Chevy Chase) that had been forgotten for more than a century (homes were built on top of it in the 1940s). As a result of my research, the DC Historic Preservation Office was able to map the cemetery’s location.
• The research identified a previously unknown African American community in what is now Chevy Chase that was founded by free persons of color in the 1810s.
• The report treats the heavily disturbed cemetery as a traditional cultural property and it contextualizes it among other similar African American cemeteries sealed beneath roads and parking lots as a Blacktop Burial Ground: a vernacular type of historic property that combines an earlier, disturbed African American cemetery with a twentieth century parking lot covering its surface.

When I transmitted the report to the Montgomery County Housing Opportunities Commission, the agency that owns most of the site, I offered recommendations for pursuing historic preservation and for working with the descendant community. 

After emailing the report and a completed Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties form to the Montgomery County Historic Preservation Office, historic preservation supervisor Rebeccah Ballo acknowledged receiving the materials: “Thank you very much for transmitting this information to our office and to Parks as well. We will keep your reports in the property files here in the historic preservation office in the Planning Department. Once we have a chance to read through the materials we will certainly let you know if we have any questions.”

Though the Montgomery County Planning Department’s Historic Preservation Office now has all of the necessary information required to initiate Master Plan for Historic Preservation designation proceedings — something that the agency should have done during the Westbard Sector Plan process — it appears that the materials will remain unused in the office’s files. This might be something the press or Montgomery County historic preservation advocates might want to follow-up on.

Read the complete report below this management summary:

This report presents research on the River Road Moses Cemetery site in Bethesda, Maryland. It was prepared on behalf of the River Road African American descendant community. The following sections include a historic context divided into periods developed by the Maryland Historical Trust for the evaluation of historic properties. The historic context presents substantive archival and oral history research documenting the cemetery site, the community within which it is located, the fraternal organization that founded it, and its historical connections to Washington, D.C.

The historic context is used as a baseline to evaluate the property against the Montgomery County criteria for designation in the Master Plan for Historic Preservation and the National Register of Historic Places. This report finds that the River Road Moses Cemetery appears to be eligible for designation in the Montgomery County Master Plan for Historic Preservation under four criteria: for its associations with the development of Montgomery County and the region; because it exemplifies multiple aspects of Montgomery County’s heritage; because it embodies distinctive characteristics typical of its historic property type; and, because it represents a distinguishable entity within a cultural landscape.

The River Road Moses Cemetery furthermore appears to be eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places under three criteria. The site appears to be eligible for listing under Criterion A for its associations with African American and suburban history; Criterion C for its architectural and landscape qualities; and, Criterion D for its potential to yield significant new information in history. The property also appears to be eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places as a traditional cultural property.

Report

© 2018 D.S. Rotenstein

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