Maides Cemetery - Uncovering hidden history in Wilmington, North Carolina
April 29, 2024

Maides Cemetery, located next to the baseball field at Maides Park (1101 Manly Avenue), Wilmington, NC

Edit-Update: (An Army veteran, having achieved the rank of Colonel, Kathy King was a fierce advocate for our veterans. She was also active in many community organizations and tirelessly supported affordable housing. Kathy died on January 25, 2025.)

Maides Cemetery started as a family burial ground on land purchased by John Franklin Maides (1892-1958) and his sister, Anna Maides (1882-1987), in 1913. However, the burial ground's origins trace back to the 1890s, when their father, James, and uncle, George, migrated from Jones County, North Carolina, to the Wilmington area with their growing families.

On about an acre of wooded land, a mile east of historic downtown Wilmington, 98 individual grave markers identify the burial ground known as Maides Cemetery. From professionally engraved headstones to a half-buried terracotta pot, these grave markers reflect the memories and cultural practices of Black families who migrated from rural areas to Wilmington after emancipation.

However, Maides Cemetery's historical significance is not limited to its grave markers. The cemetery's origins, development, unmarked burials, and preservation also shed light on the social history of an underrepresented community in the Wilmington area.

A Community Burial Ground
*Note: Anna Maides Graham Payne and her brother John F. Maides purchased the land, but were buried at Pine Forest Cemetery.

The one-acre cemetery tract on the land purchased by the Maides family started as family burial ground. Four generations of the Maides family are buried within the hallowed grounds of Maides Cemetery in Old East Wilmington.

The matriarch of the family, Hettie Graham, her three sons, their wives, and several of their children and grandchildren are laid to rest there.

The oldest Maides brother, John W. Maides, and his wife, Annie Maides, eventually returned to North Carolina from Indianapolis. They settled in East Wilmington and were buried alongside each other at Maides Cemetery in the late 1920s.

James B. Maides Sr., and his wife, Matilda Maides, are also buried alongside each other. Their children, John F. Maides and Anna Graham Payne, purchased the tract of land where the burial ground was established. James and Matilda operated a peanut farm on the majority of the 15 acres.

16 Maides family members were laid to rest in the burial ground now known as Maides Cemetery, but only ten have an identifiable gravemarker.

Maides Cemetery is more than a family burial ground, however. As of August 2024, there are 221 documented burials connected to what is now commonly known as Maides Cemetery.

Since the early 1900s, it was a community burial ground for East Wilmington's black population. Over 80% of the people laid to rest at the cemetery can be directly linked to a residence in East Wilmington.

While the city's white population had two publicly-owned cemeteries with over 75 acres of land for burying and memorializing their dead, Black residents only had the much smaller Pine Forest Cemetery.

Much of East Wilmington remained primarily dirt roads until the late 20th century, however. Burial in Pine Forest Cemetery likely required more time and money than most people living outside the city limits had available.

According to oral history, people paid $5 to bury family members on the Maides cemetery tract.

Maides Cemetery was an integral part to a community built on kinship, hard work, and mutual aid.

Uncovering its buried history also offers insight into other aspects of the East Wilmington community.

For example, George and James Maides were also part of a small group of trustees for the local lodge of a Black mutual aid society called the Knights of Gideon. The organization was started as a life insurance company, and it was headquartered in Goldsboro with 90 lodges throughout North Carolina by 1906.

The East Wilmington Star Lodge was located on Princess Place Drive. County land records show that the lodge sold parcels of its land to community members throughout the 1920s and 1930s, many whom are buried at Maides Cemetery.
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