History Of The Halfway African American Cemetery
Artist's impression of cemetery in 1910, by Mary Jean Hughes, © 2023
Halfway “Colored” Cemetery was founded in 1897 by a black fraternal organization in Hagerstown, the Perseverance Lodge of the Good Samaritans and Daughters of Samaria. It served the greater Jonathan Street community for about 35 years, with the last known burials taking place in 1932. The cemetery contains earlier graves too, dating as far back as 1844. These are believed to have been moved to Halfway from the Bethel/Ebenezer A.M.E. Church cemetery, on Bethel Street in Hagerstown.
The names of approximately 400 people buried in the cemetery are known (see the Burials List on this website). This seems to have been the largest black cemetery in Washington County. At least fifteen veterans are buried here: fourteen men who fought in the Civil War, and one who fought in World War I. The people buried at Halfway include a midwife, a Pullman porter, a teacher, a pastor, a nurse, a Storer College student, a civil servant, property owners, musicians, restaurateurs, domestic workers, hotel employees, laborers, and infants.
Research continues to identify the dead of Halfway Cemetery and their descendants. Several descendants/relatives serve on our board of directors.
Originally, the cemetery was six acres in size, covering most of what is now the 11000 block of Clinton Avenue, on both sides of the street. But by 1944, the Samaritan lodge was no longer active. The remaining directors sold most of the cemetery property to a property developer, retaining less than an acre as cemetery. That portion is the cemetery today, tucked away behind houses and yards in a Hagerstown suburb.
In the twentieth century, the cemetery became overgrown and largely forgotten. Most of the headstones were moved and broken. It became impossible to walk into the cemetery, because of vegetation and fallen trees. Few of the grave locations in the cemetery itself are marked. Only about 45 graves ever had headstones, and not all of those survive. Only a few of them are still standing on the original gravesites.
Restoration efforts began in March 2020 and continue today. The cemetery has been cleared of brush and is regularly mowed; new fences have been installed on some of the boundaries; and the gravestones have been cleaned. Visitors should take care of the uneven ground and tripping hazards, and understand that this reclaimed site does not look like a continuously tended cemetery.
Ground penetrating radar (GPR) in 2021 indicated that there are probably graves in one of the yards adjacent to the cemetery (which was part of the original cemetery).
A new public entry from the street, with a cemetery sign, was completed in 2024, funded in part by a Maryland Heritage Areas Authority capital grant through the Heart of the Civil War Heritage Area. This made the cemetery accessible for the first time in decades.
