Florence, South Carolina (Press release, October 25, 2024) – Mrs. Vivian Holmes Guyton, who led a racially diverse group in obtaining a historical marker and preserving one of South Carolina’s oldest and largest slave cemeteries, the Roseville Plantation Slave and Freedman Cemetery (RPSFC) in Florence, has died today at the age of 93. Mrs. Guyton’s great grandmother, Minerva Cato Brockinton, was a slave at Roseville.
Located in a wooded area less than a mile from the main plantation house, the number of graves in the antebellum cemetery is thought to exceed 250 and date back to the 1770s, according to a 1997 archeological survey conducted by the Chicora Foundation. Depressions in the soil, not tombstones, mark the final resting places of most of the former slaves and their descendants.
In the early 2000s, Mrs. Guyton spearheaded a group of slave descendants, enslavers descendants, current owners of Roseville Plantation and numerous historians to try to honor those buried at the cemetery. They were successful when the South Carolina Department of Archives and History awarded the RPSFC a historical marker in 2004.
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It states, “This was originally the slave cemetery for Roseville Plantation. Roseville, established about 1771 by the Dewitt family, was later owned by the Brockinton, Bacot and Clarke families from the 1820s through the Civil War. A 1,200-acre plantation, it had more than 100 slaves living and planting cotton here by 1850. Slaves, freedmen and their descendants were buried here for two hundred years, from the 1770s to the 1970s.”
Mrs. Guyton was the featured speaker when Roseville Plantation celebrated its semiquincentennial (250-year anniversary) on October 24, 2021. Her speech that day was titled “Descendants of the Enslavers and Enslaved Coming Together in Love.” After the celebration, Mrs. Guyton was interviewed by television stations WBTW and WPDE.
In the past few years, Mrs. Guyton focused on leading a group, the Roseville Planation Slave and Freedman’s Cemetery Committee (RPSFCC), to try to save the cemetery for future generations. They were successful when Francis Marion University, who owns the land where the cemetery is located, agreed to preserve it.
“I am overjoyed that we have come together to show respect for the souls that once walked this earth, just as we are today,” said Mrs. Guyton earlier this year. “We are here to remember history. To learn from history. And to allow history to help us grow in unity, harmony and appreciation that all people are created in the image of God. We live in a time when it is easy to use history as a divisive tool. However, I believe that if we have a genuine commitment to the betterment of all of society then we can study history with an eye towards better understanding people.”
Read also: South Carolinians can now obtain concealed weapons permits without instructional costs under new programRick Wilson, President, RPSFCC, said, “Our committee is forever grateful to Mrs. Vivian for her leadership in preserving this historic cemetery and honoring our family members. She was like my mother and meant so much to me. My heart is broken.”
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