Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of stories on efforts to clean up Strathy Hall Cemetery.

Members of the Bryan County NAACP Youth and property owner Richard Appleton are the latest to work on reclaiming a piece of Bryan County’s history.

Several NAACP members met July 26 for the clean up day, and Bryan NAACP President Johnnie Quiller said they’ll go back in September to continue working on restoring Strathy Hall Cemetery, the resting place of an estimated 100 slaves from Strathy Hall plantation.

Previous efforts to clean up the cemetery included the Richmond Hill Historical Society’s sponsoring in a 2012 cleanup by Georgia Southern University anthropology students.

Then RHHS vice president Christy Sherman was among those who helped at the 2012 cleanup, and told the News at the time that the cemetery was used by the McAllister family to bury slaves.

The cemetery, which also graves from as recently as the 1970s, was also used by slave family descendants and local black churches.

There reportedly were earlier attempts made at cleaning up and restoring the cemetery, including one around 2002 by Georgia Southern students and others.