by Jeremy Morrison, Inweekly
Soon, a community advisory group will begin to explore a recently discovered burial ground in Pensacola’s Miraflores Park. The group’s work will involve not only determining the best options for reinterring two individuals unearthed on the property, but also seek to gather more information and community input about the former African-American burial ground.
Setting the stage for the advisory group’s work, a collective of experts leading the effort to learn more recently gathered for an informational session on the topic and laid out what information is known thus far about the former burial near downtown.
“So, this is not the end of the road, in a sense, this is how far we’ve gotten,” Adrianne Walker, Pensacola’s cultural resources coordinator.
In June 2021, a group of Boy Scouts cleaning out the basement of the Boy Scout building — the park’s only property — discovered a collection of bones. State and local officials, including archaeologists from the University of West Florida, determined that the remains belonged to two individuals and that the park was likely previously used as a burial ground for African-American and Creole residents of the city in the late 1800s.
During a Jan. 25 informational session, experts involved with studying the history of Miraflores Park and its use as a burial ground, presented information about what they have learned so far and what the plans are moving forward to learn more.
Pointing out a 1906 newspaper article regarding municipal efforts to prevent the space from being used as a burial ground, Walker said that the mention is the last such reference to the park’s use.
“This is the last reference we can find right now,” she said. “This is very vague, obviously, telling the street superintendent to clean up the park.”
The 1906 reference to the park’s use as a burial ground is among other articles discussing the matter during the 1880s. An August 1887 newspaper publication of a report from City Engineer, Wm. Galt Chipley, lists Miraflores Park, then known as Havana Square, as “being used as a negro grave yard.”
“If Pensacola grows as we expect, this square will be the most beautiful in the city,” Chipley’s report continued. “It is situated on rising ground, and at such an elevation, that a fine view of both bayou and bay can be had. I would suggest that further internments should be stopped, and those already buried should be removed.”
The two individuals discovered by the Boy Scouts were likely disturbed during the 1934 construction of the BSA building. Dr. Katie Miller Wolf, of UWF’s Department of Anthropology, stressed that the remains were “all mixed together,” but that testing and study had confirmed the probability that the remains belonged to a female in her 30s or 40s, and a male, probably, the same age or slightly older. In the female’s case, at least, there was enough remains to suggest cranial traits associated with historic populations of Pensacola, such as African, Creole and European.
The information learned from studying the remains discovered beneath the Boy Scout building, as well as that learned from digging into the historical record will form the foundation on which Pensacola’s community advisory group will begin their exploration into the Miraflores site. Walker explained that the advisory group’s study will inform the city’s steps moving forward.
“We are doing this study because we want to make sure that we have explored all the avenues, understand all the bioarcheological side of it, find all the historical records, do our due diligence before doing anything further,” she said.
Eventually, the city plans to in some way reinter the remains of the discovered individuals and also recognize the former burial ground. First though, said Mayor D.C. Reeves, more field work must be conducted — such as employing ground penetrating radar to search for additional burials — and the advisory group must also gather community input on the matter prior to making any decisions about the site’s future.
“I think it would be difficult to speculate at this point,” said Mayor D.C. Reeves. “Let’s see truly what we have in front of us here and what we’re dealing with here.”