{"nrhp_refnum":"94001458","name":"Methodist Church Cemetery","other_names":[],"category":"district","location":{"address":"Jct. of S. Aspen and W. Congress Sts., W corner","address_restricted":false,"city":"Lincolnton","county":"Lincoln County","state":"NC","lat":35.46799202900007,"lon":-81.25616393299998,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1994-12-14","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Other","Exploration/Settlement","Black"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A grass-covered burying ground of roughly a city block in Lincolnton, Lincoln County, North Carolina, two blocks south of the public square, with about 275 marked graves. It was the site of the Methodist congregation's church from the 1820s until 1920 and was first used as a burial ground in 1828.","why_significant":"The cemetery is important for its collection of nineteenth and early twentieth century gravestones, which represent successive monument styles and include work by known carvers and marble yards. It is also tied to the town's history as one of only a few church-related public burying grounds before Hollybrook Cemetery opened in 1905, and it contains the earliest intact group of known African American burials in Lincolnton.","narrative":"Grass-covered and shaded by a grove of cedar and deciduous trees, the Methodist Church Cemetery lies two blocks south of the public square in Lincolnton. The first documented burial took place in 1828, after the death of the Reverend James Hill, minister of the Methodist congregation that worshipped on the site until 1920. Marble and granite gravestones mark the graves, among them a Greek Revival tablet carved by W. T. White of Charleston, South Carolina, for Martha Fulenwider, who died in 1855. Other stones were produced by Gaddess Bros. of Baltimore, Tiddy of Lincolnton and Charlotte, and Carolina Marble Works of Lincolnton. The cemetery was one of the town's few public burying grounds until Hollybrook Cemetery opened in 1905. Its marked and unmarked graves of African Americans, many with field stones or quartz rocks, form the earliest intact group of such burials in Lincolnton. The cemetery is valued for its funerary art and its record of church-based burial in the town.","period_of_significance":"ca. 1828-1944","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":null,"criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"The former church building was demolished in 1963 and the site was merged with the cemetery; a filling station on the front lot is described as abandoned.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-haiku-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.1-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 17:11:41.753461-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/93/7181/47718193/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NC/94001458.pdf"},"photo":null,"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/47718193","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodist_Church_Cemetery","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19881255"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/north-carolina/lincoln-county/methodist-church-cemetery-94001458/"}