Marker Text: This cemetery is located on land that was originally part of Jared E. Kirby's Alta Vista Plantation. According to oral tradition, the Kirby family set aside this land as a burial site for those enslaved, as well as those enslaved from the nearby Liendo Plantation, owned by Kirby's cousin, Leonard Waller Croce. The numerous unmarked graves here are believed to date to the Antebellum period, when most families of people buried here would not have had the resources to erect lasting grave markers. The cemetery continued to be used by Black people after the Civil War ands after Kirby's widow, Helen Marr Swearingen Kirby, deeded the plantation to the state in 1876 for the Alta Vista College for Colored Youth (now Prairie View A&M University). Later, the cemetery became associated with and named for Wyatt Chapel, a nearby African American church. The oldest marked grave is that of Mattie (Wyatt) Wells (d. 1882), the daughter of a former slave. Area religious leaders, veterans of World Wars I and II, and former slaves and their descendants are also buried here. Used until the 1950s, the cemetery remains a tangible reminder of African Americans' historic presence in this area.

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Wyatt Chapel Cemetery is thought to contain the graves of over 2,000 enslaved people and itinerant workers associated with the Liendo and Alta Vista Plantations. As was the custom of the day, most of these burials were never recorded or marked. Some burials occurred during the first half of the 20th century, but this cemetery fell into disrepair and was later abandoned. In recent years this area was primarily used for the dumping of trash and undisposable debris.

In July 2007 and February 2008, participants in a graduate course at Rice University and Prairie View A&M University acquired global positioning systems and ground-penetrating radar in an attempt to prove that such equipment could be used to locate lost graves. Various "anomalies" were noted from within the surface of the ground, and two confirmed grave shafts were noted. Neither individual was identified.

Students from area universities, along with Project Respect (a volunteer organization dedicated to the preservation of black historical cemeteries), continue to work at the Wyatt Chapel Cemetery site by clearing additional pathways, excavating, marking and otherwise identifying additional gravesites. Volunteers are welcome, and may sign up for this and/or other local grave restoration projects at ProjectRespect.com.

Sources: "A Journal of History and Culture - A Geophysical Investigation of Wyatt Chapel Cemetery" by Alison T. Hening, Ginger Burns, Richard Hoffman, and Brian Jacoby
"Wyatt Chapel Community Cemetery" - Mildred W. Abshier
Project Respect website

All memorials that can be found have been photographed by Chris Davis as of 1/2010.