St. Michael's Church Cemetery

Front inscription

In 1892, St. Michael’s Methodist Church, one of the first African American churches in Bennettsville, established a cemetery here in what was then the town’s northeastern outskirts. In that year, church trustees purchased the two acres on the cemetery’s southern end from the estate of John A. McRae. The church first organized in 1868. Members worshipped 1 mi. SW and were previously buried in family plots or other graveyards.

Reverse inscription

In 1908, trustees acquired three more acres from the McRae estate to expand northeast, towards what later became Country Club Drive. The church graveyard was sometimes identified with adjacent Oak Ridge Cemetery, an older, historically white cemetery. Burials took place into the 2000s. Multiple generations of families are interred here, including St. Michael’s members and many others from the broad community.