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Headstone missing at East End Cemetery
07/30/2015 8:09 AM by John M
Volunteers at the East End Cemetery clean-up effort discovered this weekend that someone has stolen a recently uncovered headstone:
This stand is all that’s left after someone removed Dr. R. F. Tancil’s headstone from his plot at #eastendcemetery between Sunday evening and this morning. Dr. Tancil was among Richmond’s most prominent African American citizens in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was a Howard graduate and the president of the Nickel Savings Bank. He also supported the 1904 streetcar boycott, in which black Richmonders protested the advent of racially segregated seating on the city’s streetcars.
All the more reason we need a pictorial record of the reclamation efforts of John and Hands on Richmond as they do great work in clearing the cemetery.
This is so sad– we feature Dr. Tancil on our bike tour–
Bewildering. John Shuck reported the missing stone to Henrico PD. Channels 6 and 8 will be doing stories on it this PM.
Re documentation, that’s what my wife and I are doing. We’re one effort among several (John set up a Shutterfly page in addition to https://eastendcemetery.wordpress.com/; Dr. Kim Gower’s UR students set up an Instagram acct, #eastendcemeteryRVA; also there’s #eastendcemetery) to document the preservation work—and to share stories of the community East End served. Erin and I will exhibiting some of our images (plus archival images and pix by fellow volunteers) at UR Downtown. The opening is Sept 4. More details to come.
What needs to be done to create a perpetual care fund for these (Evergreen, East End, et al) cemeteries? The volunteer work is fantastic, but the situation over all is still disgraceful.
Lee, my limited understanding is that a larger solution has been roadblocked by owners/trustees who are getting in the way of a larger solution and thereby standing on the side of the weeds and atrophy of this important memorial. When there’s a strong enough coalition of support groups led by those with a direct lineage to the cemetery, I feel confident the community will come out to support these efforts.
Several people that are buried here are significant in Richmond s history, said John Shuck, who volunteers at the cemetery. The headstone marking the final resting place of one Mary Tancil reads, I am not alone.