Until this summer, Magnolia Cemetery was surrounded by a high metal fence and its double front gates padlocked. Tours could get the key to the lock a city office, but the cemetery was generally off limits to the public. Local law enforcement officers have cleared away vines that covered the side fences and made the cemetery impossible to superintend. The Youth Corps youngsters have taken down the front fence and gates and are cleaning up the cemetery, weeding and seeding the grounds, scrubbing and uprighting stones, mulching borders, graveling walkways, and planting flowers around the long planted. But cleaning, clearing, restoring, and opening the cemetery has become an exciting way for the Youth Corps cadre to learn history.
Magnolia is a dreamland place to learn local and even national history.
It combines archeology with history, for as accumulated debris and moss are brushed carefully away, the students find clues to difference-makers. There are Clevelands here, of the family that donated the cemetery land. One of his sons was killed early in the Civil War. Another became president of Randolph-Macon College. Another was a legislator and railroad executive.