Beneath the Houston skyline is a portal into the past.
“Just walk the path and be able to connect their history,” Margott Williams said.
Founded in the 1870′s, the Olivewood Cemetery sits along the White Oak Bayou in the Greater Heights Area.
“It’s lots of stories here,” Williams said.
Williams uncovered the cemetery buried beneath brush 20 years ago.
“Probably 30, 40, 50 years of overgrowth,” she recalled.
She went on a journey to reunite her family.
“My grandmother had passed, and I thought it would be beautiful for her to be with her husband,” Williams said.
She realized she would need help.
That’s when the Descendants of Olivewood formed.
“Once we start cleaning, [we were] mind blown,” Williams said.
Unearthing the foundation of Houston’s own Black history.
“It was incorporated about 1875,” Anthropologist Jasmine Lee said. “It was designed as a place as the newly freed community to have a place to bury their dead and honor them as time move forward.”
From school teachers to business owners.
“We have veterans here from Buffalo Soldiers, World War I, World War II,” Williams said.
She finally found her own loved one.
“C.H Nelson, Cane Howard Nelson Senior,” Williams pointed out.
Learning his mark on history.
“First Black grand juror to sit on the grand jury here in Houston,” she said.
Now, this group works to reconnect other families to their past.
“There are about 4,000 burials in Olivewood but we only have about 1,000 headstones,” Lee said. “Olivewood is a place where you can transcend time and space and commune with the people that endured so much and the reason why we are all here because they were able to endure.”
The Descendants of Olivewood are currently working on taking the cemetery virtual in hopes of connecting with more descendants worldwide.