Teen plans to identify historic graves in Collier County cemetery

A 15-year-old boy is working to restore a historic Collier County cemetery in the hope of identifying eight unnamed Black people buried there and bringing the entire gravesite the respect it deserves.

“We’re trying to raise around $40,000 in total,” said Jonathan Rodriguez.

Raising that kind of cash is no small feat, but Jonathan has big plans. He believes it’s wrong that there’s merely a marker for Rosemary Cemetery but nothing for the dead.

“The entire idea is to basically give these African American people that have been buried here over 100 years ago, to give them a more acceptable gravesite, because as you can see by just looking at them, all they have is small pillars of stone and metal in the ground to represent where they are,” Jonathan said.

Part of the cemetery is located at 1000 Pine Ridge Road within the parking lot of a CVS. But a segregated area is located in the parking lot of the Goodlette Corners Plaza on Pine Ridge and Goodlette-Frank Road.

“The basic idea is to, one, get ownership of the land, and then to get a survey so we can have access to it and put stuff such as fences and benches in it,” Jonathan said.

Jonathan calls what he’s doing Project Reverence. He started it to become an Eagle Scout. One of his first calls was to Amanda Townsend, the director of Collier County museums.

“We do not know who is buried here,” Townsend said.

However, we do know that they were buried in the early 1930s. No records were kept on who they were or where their families were from.

Townsend says she believes that Jonathan will change all that with Project Reverence.

“I actually have every bit of confidence that he’ll be able to raise all funds necessary,” Townsend said. “The museum also can contribute if necessary… I don’t think there are financial impediments to getting the job done.”

“I couldn’t imagine my family members being buried like that,” Jonathan said. “And I know that somewhere out there, there’s probably family members that want them to have their own stuff. So, along those lines… plus, I’ve been born and raised here. So, as my mother and her mother before… they’ve known about these graves for their entire lives. And so when I decided what I was going to do for [my] Eagle Scout project, I knew it had to be with Plot N”

Jonathan’s plan is for the unnamed to be named by September 2024. To learn more about Project Reverence, visit its Facebook page.