Part of Harbour Town Heritage
Posted 03:23 p.m., April 19, 2008
HILTON HEAD ISLAND
A lot of visitors to the Verizon Heritage do a double take if they happen to take a shortcut toward the 18th fairway of Harbour Town Golf Links.
Amid all the towering condominiums is a small, simple graveyard, a graveyard that has been around at least since the 1800s and maybe earlier, and a graveyard that's still in use to this day.
Chisholm and Williams are two names that are prominent in the small cemetery that has three or four dozen graves. Many of the headstones are homemade and constructed of concrete with the name of the deceased scratched out by hand. The earliest time of death I saw on a tomb was 1823, and there was a grave with the date 2008.
"It's a native cemetery, and there are still active funerals," Cary Corbitt, the director of sports for Sea Pines Plantation explained. "About five years ago, we had a funeral early in the week of the tournament."
Corbitt said the cemetery belongs to native islanders, the families of freed slaves with ancestors all over Hilton Head Island. There are other such cemeteries scattered across Hilton Head Island.
It seems so incongruous, a stark contrast to the resort condos, yet it's an important part of the Hilton Head Island heritage.
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