Residents wonder about tombstone in basement

No one knows what happened to the bodies in nearby gravesite

For residents of the 1 Murray Avenue apartments, the tombstone in the basement has always been a part of their lives.

Martha Turner had forgotten about the tombstone since she moved from the apartment in 2013. But when she read an article in The Capital about a gravesite nearby that had been destroyed during urban renewal, she started to wonder.

Like other residents of the apartment, Turner stumbled upon the gravestone when she went to check her circuit breaker.

The curves of Greenberry Lark’s headstone jut out from the waistheight wall it’s cemented into. It’s engraved with his birthday, Dec. 25, 1780, and death date, Nov. 19, 1826.

The floor of the basement is pooled with water from a leak. A child’s dirt bike rests against a wall. There are discarded liquor bottles, trash and pieces of furniture scattered on the wet floor.

Though the tombstone sits about 1,000 feet from City Gate Lane, where a graveyard behind the county’s first African American church was bulldozed to make townhouses in 1980, Greenberry Lark has no connection to the remains dug up there.

Lark was originally buried in his family cemetery in Severna Park, according to the Anne Arundel Genealogical Society. The LinstidHeath-Lark Cemetery was in the woods off a road running from Ritchie Highway down to the river alongside Cypress Creek Road.

Lark’s family and his in-laws made up its 14 graves. In 1961, three footstones without headstones were found in an area the society reported as overgrown with myrtle and lilies. As of 2000, the society said the graveyard is no longer in existence.

A relative of Lark, Mary Moss, owned the other half of the divided building where his tombstone ended up, according to online land records. It’s likely Moss took Lark’s tombstone there to preserve it, longtime Murray Hill resident and historian Robert Worden said.

Moss sold the building in 1995 and it is now owned by real estate investors Ron and Rochelle Hollander. The Hollanders did not respond for comment.

Marty Allen has lived in one of the apartments for 10 years. He hasn’t been bothered by the tombstone since he first saw it in the basement. He trusts the instincts of his Shih Tzu, Sophie, and she isn’t spooked by it.

“I wondered why the Hollanders never removed it, but maybe they don’t want to mess with it.”

No one knows what happened to the bodies buried in Severna Park and the tombstone in the Murray Hill basement is the only one the society has been able to track down, cemetery chair Tina Simmons said.

Patricia Samford, the director of the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Lab at the Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum where the remains found while building City Gate Lane were archived, said the lab does not archive gravestones and has nothing from the LinstidHeath-Lark Cemetery.

This isn’t the first time Simmons has seen a gravestone moved like this, either for vandalism or an attempt at preservation. At the historic James Brice house in Annapolis, restoration workers recently discovered the Brices repurposed a family member’s gravestone to make steps.

“They’ve been used for sidewalks, patios, coffee tables. There are lots of horror stories out there,” Simmons said. “It’s important that people realize this is part of their history. It needs protecting.”

While an apartment basement is probably not what the Lark family had in mind for one of its headstones, Simmons says it’s probably safest there.

“Tombstones do get knocked over, broken by tree limbs, all sorts of things,” Simmons said. “I can’t think where else it would be better protected. We don’t have a little museum we can put stones we’ve found or that type of thing.”

Historian Jane McWilliams disagrees. She thinks Lark’s descendants should be located and decide what to do with his headstone. twitter.com/selenecapgaz