Longstreet Cemetery

When the U.S. Army decided to move helicopter operations to Alabama in August 1942 they built a new base, Fort Rucker, now Fort Novosel. But there was a problem. People had settled here a hundred years earlier and over time buried a number of loved ones in cemeteries near their settlements.  

To show respect to those buried there, the federal government and Holman Funeral Home worked together to move the cemeteries to Ebenezer Baptist Church, which was founded in 1842 and moved here in 1942. They carefully created numbered maps of each cemetery to ensure graves would be reburied in the correct order. Some graves could not be identified and were listed as unknown. Then, all six cemeteries were moved to the site of a former school, Longstreet School.

The current Longstreet Cemetery includes graves from Ebenezer Baptist Church Cemetery, Haw Ridge Methodist Church Cemetery, Zion Methodist Church Cemetery, Mt. Liberty Baptist Church Cemetery, and two private cemeteries. Each cemetery is laid out and identified with a name marker.