ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, May 30, 1996 TAG: 9605300106
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: E-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHY LU STAFF WRITER
BENEATH a canopy of overgrown weeds and amid a few soggy old mattresses, crumbling brick walls form three sides of a square to hug the two graves within.
The weathered tombstone shared by the graves still bears the names of the husband and wife who once owned about a third of Roanoke: Col. Elijah and Agatha McClanahan, the granddaughter of Gen. Andrew Lewis, one of Virginia's most famous Revolutionary War heroes.
But the walls can only protect so much. Time, nature and neglect have obscured the gravesite not only from view, but also from Roanokers' minds.
The McClanahan cemetery has been in disrepair for decades, and first was brought to public attention with an article in the Roanoke World-News in 1965. That was before an Advance Auto Parts store and various houses sprang up at the bottom of the knoll where it sits at the corner of Salem Turnpike and 24th Street.
When the 1965 article was written, the walls could be seen from the streets. Now, not so much as a path exists to the forlorn plots.
Although the cemetery is referred to on land records as "McClanahan Cemetery - perpetual reserve," a title search by City Attorney Wilburn Dibling revealed that the land belongs to Natalie Foster Lemon and her sister, Mary Waynick, who are in their 80s.
"We followed every deed in the chain of title, and none of those had any reference to the reservation of cemetery rights," said Dibling.
But the family thought that the land had been given to the city years ago.
"We do not and have never claimed any ownership of that property," said Andy Roberts, Lemon's nephew. "Anyone alive in our family today has always known that property to be a perpetual cemetery in the McClanahan family. As far as I'm concerned, it belongs to them."
Dibling said the title search took him back more than 100 years through the circuit courts of Roanoke city and the counties of Roanoke and Botetourt.
"But I'm sure [the family] is accurate when they say they have no interest in the property and would donate it to anyone," he added.
Now, the Fincastle Resolutions Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, the Margaret Lynn Lewis Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Roanoke Historical Society are asking the city to assume responsibility for the cemetery's restoration.
"The maintenance and preservation of a historical site is clearly a proper government function," Judge Jack Coulter, an SAR member and speaker for an ad hoc committee interested in the cemetery, told Roanoke City Council in April. "Right now, the gravesite is a sorry disgrace."
City Manager Bob Herbert said that a staff team has been assigned to research the possibility of the city taking over care of the McClanahan gravesite, and that the team has only begun its work.
"The team is trying to identify all the issues and concerns that are involved with this request," said Herbert. "One of the issues may be that [the city] already has a historical cemetery, so how much further should we go beyond that?"
City Council must wait for the team to present its findings before any action can be taken.
The only public marker that indicated the gravesite's location was knocked down by a car in 1986 and has been in city storage since. The DAR, which erected the metal tablet in Agatha Strother Lewis' name, wants the city to replace the marker.
In 1990, the city declared the gravesite a nuisance because of the "weeds and/or trash" on the land and filed a lien against the owners listed in the deed book, who were long dead.
"If people don't take an interest in the cemetery now, then people in the future won't know what happened in the past," said Margaret Hatch, former regent of the DAR. "This should be something [Roanokers] would be very proud of and would want to preserve."
The McClanahans lived in the time when Roanoke was known as "Big Lick" and when Botetourt County stretched to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. Elijah and his brother James owned "The Long Meadow Survey," which covered 1,690 acres lying on both sides of 24th Street, with the Roanoke River as its southernmost boundary.
Coulter believes that the hill where the graves lie and the brick wall around them were once conspicuous enough to be seen from a distance - to mark the cemetery's importance.
But as prominent as Elijah was - he served as the justice of the peace for a new Roanoke County in 1838 - McClanahan Street in South Roanoke was not named after him, but for his father, William.
Besides being Botetourt's deputy sheriff in 1779 and sheriff in 1782, William McClanahan also owned more than 3,000 acres worth of plantations. His largest property spanned the area of Crystal Spring, Mill Mountain and most of South Roanoke.
"The McClanahans were some of the forebears of the city of Roanoke. They settled the land and they populated it," said Clare White, Roanoke's unofficial resident historian. "They're very important to this valley, and that's why we need to do them honor."
Richard Loveland, director of the Roanoke Historical Society, couldn't agree more. "This gravesite," he said, "might represent the last remaining contact we have with the roots of Roanoke."
LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: PAUL L. NEWBY II Staff Weeds almost have overtaken theby CNBgravesite of Col. Elijah and Agatha McClanahan in McClanahan
cemetery.|