Garfield Settlement Cemetery
Deltona, Volusia County, Fla.
This cemetery is located on 3 building lots in Deltona the was once the
black community of Garfield in Enterprise, It no longer exists as a community and most of
the settlers are gone.
There are numerous funeral home markers with no information left on them with the
exception of 2 headstones and 1 funeral home marker.
Sylvia Hardin found the cemetery and asked me for help in preserving it so no one would
build on it and I have done what I can, Alice Boddy who lives next to the cemetery has
been trying to preserve it since she moved there years ago.
GPS N 28° 52.100 W 081° 13.564
Copyright ©2010, W.R. Morgan
Butler, Darlene, d. Dec. 16, 195?
Charles P. Bailey funeral home marker
Jenkins, John A., b. 1877 d. 1928
J. A. the rest illegible.
By BOB KOSLOW (bob.koslow@news-jrnl.com)
DELTONA - Abandoned and neglected, but never forgotten, the historic Garfield
Settlement Cemetery is receiving needed light despite the canopy of trees and brush that
hide its hallowed ground.
| Discovered crypts ZOOM PHOTO 
News-Journal/ Previously unknown graves were discovered in the underbrush off of Saxon Boulevard in Deltona Thursday morning. The possible cemetery was located only after a permit application was made for an adjacent lot. The city has put a halt on activity at the site until further investigation can be made. |
The city has temporarily banned all building permits for several single-family lots near Saxon Boulevard and Panama Court where there are traces of an African-American cemetery dating back more than 100 years.
"We're still doing research about the site, but we want to make sure nothing happens before we know all the facts," City Manager Fritz Behring said. The city has known about the possibility of an old cemetery there. Volusia County historic planner Tom Scofield said Thursday he has heard about the cemetery, off and on, for about 10 years.
"I would get a call every now and then from a Realtor asking about the laws regulating development on an abandoned cemetery," Scofield said. "I would explain how complex and expensive the process is and I would not hear back."
Deltona Mayor John Masiarczyk said recent inquiries from homebuilders about the lots piqued his curiosity. "How that property ever got subdivided and platted is something I would like to know," Masiarczyk said.
Enterprise resident Sylvia Harden, who is writing a book about the Garfield settlement, contacted the city about the cemetery last week.
African-American residents of Enterprise showed Harden the cemetery a few weeks ago. She in turn gave a tour Sunday to De Leon Springs resident Bill Morgan, the county coordinator for USGenWeb, a private genealogy Internet site where Morgan has posted information on about 30 small and old cemeteries in the county.
Morgan's information indicates one lot at the Garfield cemetery has at least 13 graves.
A steel marker, not taller than 6 inches, marks the burial site of a Darlene Butler who died on a Dec. 16th in the 1950s. The marker is from the Charles P. Bailey Funeral home in De Land. Bailey's son is researching the records to help the city.
A craftsman chiseled the name "Jenkins" into a marble headstone, but no dates are visible. The headstone rests on its back. A smaller marble stone has the initials "J. A." and other illegible writing.
Several concrete posts, about 4-by-6 inches and 3-feet tall, are decorated with snail shells. Scofield said the shells were commonly used as markings in the late 1880s.
"There are probably more long-forgotten and abandoned cemeteries scattered throughout the county," Morgan said. No laws regulate old cemeteries on private property, he said, other than it's prohibited to knowingly desecrate a cemetery. That includes building on top of burial plots, he said.
Family burial sites on large farms and small church cemeteries were rarely recorded and crosses were often made of wood. That hinders determining the size and location of old cemeteries, Morgan said.
Former slaves liberated by Union forces from Florida plantations founded Garfield Settlement soon after the Civil War, Scofield said. It was not a village of close buildings, but a group of homesteads carved from the scrub, centered northeast of Enterprise where Garfield Road is today. The other two lots at the cemetery have not been examined. It is believed the settlement had a wooden church on one of the lots.
"From my perspective, this is a significant site because the Garfield Settlement does not exist anymore. The cemetery is the only tangible remains of the community," Scofield said.
The developers of Deltona bought large land parcels from the Ford family in the early 1960s, including the cemetery site. The area south of Doyle Road was replatted for homes, but Saxon Boulevard was not extended toward the cemetery area until the late 1970s, Masiarczyk said.
Alice and Arthur Boddy bought their lot and built a home next to the cemetery in 1990. Alice Boddy has talked about the cemetery to city employees and real estate agents looking at the property.
I have no problem living next to a cemetery,'' Alice Boddy said. I knew about it before we bought. We haven't had any problems, but my husband swears he saw a ghost in our home. I'm just glad the city is finally doing something to protect the site.''