School project to spruce up Adams cemetery

If you see a lot of youngsters at the Major Adams Cemetery in Bradenton Saturday morning, take heart.

It's Steve Marshall’s Florida History class from the Manatee School of the Arts.

Starting at 10 a.m., students will start taking steps to clean up and record the historic cemetery.

Students and staff will map locations of grave plots and begin transcribing names and information of the people been buried there.

It's the upshot of a letter MSA student Krissy Pizzo sent Manatee County Commissioner Carol Whitmore, seeking input on the cemetery maintenance plan. Pizzo wanted to know what they could do to help preserve the historic cemetery.

Whitmore sent the letter to the City of Bradenton and got the ball rolling.

With assistance from public works department staffers Gary Kinder and Ricardo Ramos, Jeff Moates of the Florida Public Archaeology Network and Cathy Slusser, deputy director for historical resources for the Manatee County Clerk of Circuit Court’s Office, a cemetery documentation and community service project was formed. Parks and recreation staff will help direct the cleaning of headstones and markers using a cleaning agent designed for use in cemeteries.

It will be only the first of a series of visits to the cemetery to conduct the work necessary to document the several hundred headstones and markers.

New or Dew Cemetery was established in 1883 in what was the outskirts of the town of Manatee for the second generation of Manatee’s pioneer families. In 1892, additional land was purchased from Major Alden Adams resulting in the cemetery’s name change. At one time, Adams was the largest landowner in Manatee County possessing 300,000 acres.

Interested in more information about this worthwhile project?

Go to cathy.slusser@manateeclerk.com. Or jmoates@usf.edu