Graves of Black World War I veterans discovered abandoned in Allegheny County
On Friday, as America honors millions of veterans, we have a bittersweet story of an abandoned gravesite of Black World War I veterans.
It’s a startling find that has the attention of McCandless Township officials.
It was a pastor's exhausting mission to track down his family that led to this discovery.
Watch the video above to see where this search into his genealogy led him.
Rev. Richard Freeman Sr., is the proud pastor of Resurrection Baptist Church in Braddock.
He was 15 years old when his mother died and 11 years old when he lost his father, which created an emptiness in his life.
“It's an emptiness that's rooted in the fact that you don't know who you really are,” he told Pittsburgh’s Action News 4.
So Freeman signed up for ancestry.com in 2001 to learn about his generational identity.
He was born in Waycross, Georgia.
During his research, he was encouraged by a relative to look up a man named Henry Porter, who was born April 3, 1894 in Stewart County, Georgia.
Records show that Porter was enlisted in the United States Army and served in World War I as a member of the 402nd Labor Battalion.
Porter's Allegheny County death certificate says he died when he was 39 years old as a resident of Pittsburgh’s Hill District, but to Freeman's surprise, he was buried in McCandless Township.
Porter's death certificate says he was buried at the Duncan Heights Cemetery. Freeman and his son found it four years ago.
Several World War I veterans are buried there, but something surprised Freeman – Porter isn't buried there.
He did find gravesites of white soldiers. Nearby is a heavily wooded area where he continued searching for Porter's gravesite.
They took Pittsburgh's Action News 4 back into those woods to find porter four years after their first trip.
What it took to get there was utterly surprising.
Several yards into the brush our crews were joined by Freeman's wife and son.
Porter’s gravesite was discovered among eight other Black World War I veterans. It was abandoned, covered in a heavily wooded, overgrown parcel of land.
Freeman was overwhelmed after seeing this.
“I was angry,” he said. “I was furious. Black veterans that were in such disarray, just discarded.”
A community historian in McCandless Township says a Jewish entrepreneur created the cemetery during the early 1900s as a respectful and honorable place for Black people to bury loved ones.
After multiple owners, the cemetery was abandoned in the 1960s. Memorial Park Church is leading a community effort to explore ways to save and develop the cemetery.
For Freeman, it is a bittersweet moment he takes back into the pulpit as a message to his congregation.
“We are connected into the grand family of God and nothing can separate us from the love of God," he said.
