Tucked away behind a stone wall off Route 58 lies a burial ground for Blacks and whites who lived and worked in a neighborhood once known as Little Egypt. Its history is significant, given it was an integrated cemetery in the 1800s, long before the civil rights movement gradually ended racial segregation of burial grounds.
A few headstones remain in the Den Cemetery burial site. Some inscriptions are legible; others are weathered. The site sits in a forested area on Aquarion Water Company property on the border of Redding and Easton.
But who else was interred there? Where are the actual boundaries of the cemetery property?
The town’s cemetery committee hopes the use of ground-penetrating radar will help answer those questions. The committee is applying for a Connecticut Preservation Survey and Planning grant from the State Historic Preservation Office to purchase the radar. The Board of Selectmen on Feb. 2 approved the committee’s grant application. The maximum amount of the grant is $5,000.
Dr. Nicholas Bellantoni, who serves as the emeritus state archaeologist, has been working with the cemetery committee to explore options to designate the burial ground a historic site. He said the grant provides an opportunity to preserve the cemetery.
“The great thing about the radar is it’s not intrusive or destructive,” said Bellantoni. “It’s a sled that you drag over the lawn, but it’s a great way without disturbing anything to get a glimpse of what’s below ground, and it would help them (the cemetery committee) with the preservation steps.”
Deirdra Preis, a member of the cemetery committee, said the committee has to date focused its efforts on addressing the immediate needs of Center and Gilbertown cemeteries. But now it is applying for state funding to help support the future preservation of Den Cemetery.
“This funding will specifically allow us to finance updated ground imaging to confirm the existence of burial sites there and will allow us to apply for available state funding to help with restoration efforts for this cemetery,” said Preis. “We expect the radio imaging will allow us to map out exactly where the graves are located in Den to help us plan and fund preservation efforts.”
The cemetery is not just significant to Easton’s local history, but also to African American history in the state. A burial ground where deceased white and Black people were integrated in the 19th century was extremely rare for its time. The fact that many of the surviving headstones are engraved with the names of the deceased is also rare.
“We have very few cemeteries in the state of Connecticut that actually have stone markers for African Americans,” said Bellantoni.
Unlike segregated African-American cemeteries around the country that were either neglected or erased, the history of Den Cemetery is documented thanks in part to a Joel Barlow High School student who took an interest in it during the 1980s. Thirty five years ago, a sentence about the cemetery in a history book on Easton piqued Calista Cleary’s interest.
“The fact that there was a Black cemetery in Easton, an almost exclusively white town, was something I wanted to learn more about,” said Cleary, who works as the Director of the Tri-Co Philly Program at Haverford College in Philadelphia.
Cleary won a Barton L. Weller Scholarship during her senior year at Barlow to research the graves in the burial ground. Her project, titled “Little Egypt: Black History in Three New England Towns,” has been an important contribution to both Easton’s history and the history of African Americans in the state.
Cleary researched the history of the cemetery through land deeds and census data, interviews with local historians and the descendants of African Americans who lived in Little Egypt. Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition has a copy in its collection.
“There’s so much to be learned from this site,” said Cleary. “I really believe that this cemetery fits into the larger narrative of African-American history.”
The state Historic Preservation Office accepts grant applications on a rolling basis. Grants are awarded as funding is available.
