Cemetery expansion to add 500 new plots

Expansion is underway at Greenwood Cemetery and the project will add approximately 500 new grave spaces at the venerated resting place.Two short streets and two long streets are being constructed in the rear of the cemetery adjacent to the old pecan orchard. The project will leave some 12 acres of cemetery land undeveloped for future use, according to city manager Kenny Roberts.’In the last 50 years, we have used approximately 2000 grave spaces throughout the cemetery. Many of these, of course, are in the older sections. I expect the additional500 spaces will suffice for the next 20 years,’ Roberts said.Grave spaces in the cemetery sell for $450 to $900.The city occasionally gets questions about the large tract of land in the cemetery between the Confederate section and the railroad tracks where there are seemingly very few graves. That appearance is deceiving.’That area is referred to as the pauper’s cemetery. There are a lot of graves there but no records and mostly no markers. There are old newspaper obituaries that refer to burials in the pauper cemetery but, as far as I know, there has not been any exhaustive research to identify the unmarked graves,’ Roberts said.The most recent burial in the pauper’s section was that of Terry D. Corvin who died in 2000, according to historian and assistant city manager Tim Turner.’I have several death certificates of people who are buried in Greenwood that do not have headstones. These are individuals that lived in poor neighborhoods during the 30’s and 40’s – particularly around back alleys and railroad tracks. I’m sure they are buried in the paupers section. There are burials in that section going back further. I am not aware of any documentation on the paupers buried in that section that conclusively identifies any of the unmarked graves,’ Turner concluded.