A cemetery erased in Pasco? The historian says he has photographic evidence.

DADE CITY — Vicki Brandel makes a routine trip to Williams Cemetery in Dade City when she visits the graves of her father, grandparents and several uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews.

The trip is anything but routine when she visits her great-grandmother’s grave.

This requires entering private property, crossing a barbed wire fence, and then finding the cedar that the family’s history says marks near the location.

His great-grandmother Lina Jane Bryan Gaskin was among the pioneer residents of Pasco County buried at Prospect Cemetery, located off the 34100 block of Prospect Road in Dade City.

The cemetery disappeared in the 1980s. Some bodies would have been moved. But Brandel says others, like his ancestor, stay in the ground.

Today, the cemetery is part of an undeveloped 80-acre parcel owned by Price Realty LLC.

“I’ve been silent too long,” Brandel said. “I’m done keeping quiet. There is a cemetery there. It’s time we honor it and mark it again.

rural area where he says people remain buried on land that was once Prospect Cemetery.” class=”lazy” src=”data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 3000 2000"/%3E” style=”object-position:50% 50%;transition:opacity 0.5s ease 0.5s;opacity:0″ title=”Pasco County Historian Jeff Cannon uses trees and vegetation to locate a rural area where he says people remain buried on land that was once Prospect Cemetery.” itemprop=”contentUrl”/>

Pasco historian Jeff Cannon says he has proof.

He visited the cemetery site in 2006, drove a stake into the ground and hit something concrete a few inches underground.

With a shovel, Cannon carefully uncovered the type of concrete slab used to cover and mark a grave. He says it was the grave of Eugenia Osburn Howell and the slab matches a description given by her descendants. He photographed the slab and then covered it with soil again.

“What more do you need to see?” Cannon said of photography.

But Howell has a marked burial plot at Williams Cemetery, where those buried at Prospect Cemetery were believed to have been moved.

It’s a symbolic marker that gives the family a place to visit, Cannon said.

Using the front and back, the marker honors eight of the family’s earliest Pasco ancestors, beginning with David Osburn, who died in 1877 and helped establish Prospect Cemetery. Others mentioned include the “grandchildren of David Osburn at Prospect Cemetery”.

“Whoever put that marker there wanted us to know the kids are still in Prospect Cemetery,” Cannon said.

These grandchildren are Howell’s children and, according to Cannon, are buried alongside him at the obliterated Prospect Cemetery.

Read inspiring stories about ordinary lives

Subscribe to our free How They Lived newsletter

You’ll have a memory of the Tampa Bay residents we’ve lost, including heartwarming and fun details about their lives, every Tuesday.

You are all registered!

Want more of our free weekly newsletters in your inbox? Let’s start.

Explore all your options

Cannon shared with the Tampa Bay Weather a letter sent to the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office on June 24, 1986 by Howell’s descendant, William Eugene Jones. It tells the story of Prospect Cemetery from its birth to its obliteration.

the Times could not locate a member of the Jones or Howell families.

Cannon obtained a copy of the correspondence a few years ago from the archives of the Pioneer Florida Museum & Village, when he was head of the defunct Pasco County Preservation Society.

“My great-great-great-uncle David Osburn donated this land for a church and cemetery,” the letter read. “The property was given to the Methodist Church of the South on April 28, 1888.”

A copy of the deed delivered to the Times by Cannon reflects this history. Cannon said Prospect Church was built on the land with an accompanying cemetery.

Still buried there in 1986, according to the letter, were ancestors Early Osburn, who also appears on this Williams Cemetery headstone, Howell, who was Jones’ grandmother, and two of her children.

“My great-uncle and my great-grandfather had built a brick and cement vault over my grandmother’s grave, then cemented some bricks together to mark the deceased,” the letter reads. His grandmother had six bricks and the two children had four each.

Howell’s 1925 death certificate does not mention a cemetery. The church closed in the mid-1940s, according to Cannon, but the cemetery remained. Those who had family buried there took care of the upkeep, the letter said.

Jones visited the property in 1957, according to his letter, “and found the cemetery in good condition.” Some bodies were moved to Williams Cemetery in the early 1960s, but Early Osburn, Howell and her children were not.

Price Realty purchased the land in 1985 from the Florida Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, according to the deed available on the Pasco County Clerk’s website.

When Jones visited the cemetery on June 4, 1986, he wrote, the bricks marking his grandmother’s grave had crumbled into the concrete slab, leaving an open hole.

“Look at my photo of his grave,” Cannon said. “The slab has a hole in its head. My photo confirms what is written in the letter.

Jones was “very shocked and appalled at the sight of the cemetery,” he wrote. “I would like to see a historical marker ‘placed at the cemetery’ and keep the property as a sacred resting place.”

The Pasco County District Attorney’s Office responded to Jones on July 14, 1986. Cannon also has this letter. It says Pasco County is “currently working” to preserve its cemeteries.

“Nothing was done,” Cannon said.

Then, 10 years ago, he provided the Pasco County Planning and Development Department with enough evidence of Prospect Cemetery’s existence to mark it as being on Price Realty’s parcel.

the Times left Price Realty three voicemails, emailed them once, and left a note on their office doorstep. They didn’t answer.

Cannon and Brandel met in 2005 through their shared interest in finding Prospect Cemetery.

Her family Bible, from the 1800s, indicates that her great-grandmother died in 1892. The Bible also includes a lock of her great-grandmother’s hair.

According to the family’s oral history, Brandel said, his ancestor was buried near a cedar tree at the edge of the cemetery. Howell and her children were buried next to her.

Cannon found the tree and then Howell’s grave.

It’s possible Howell and his children were moved after the letter was sent in 1986, Cannon said, but he believes that process would have destroyed the century-old concrete slab.

“It’s always in the same place,” he said.

Bradel is sure her ancestor is there.

“Don’t touch her,” Bradel said. “She has been there for over 150 years. Leave her alone. Instead, remove that barbed wire.

There are no pending plans for this land to be developed, according to an email from the Department of Planning and Development.

All known burials at Prospect Cemetery were white, Cannon said, so it falls outside the jurisdiction of the state’s Abandoned African-American Cemetery Task Force, which formed earlier this year to protect erased and endangered black cemeteries.

Cannon’s work to mark it as a cemetery with the county means an acre of land must be surveyed for graves before development is permitted.

Patricia Toole lives on the property adjoining the cemetery acre. She said people “occasionally” asked her if they could park on her property while they were climbing through the barbed wire to visit a grave.

Two months ago, Toole said, she noticed trucks pulling sleds on the property owned by Price Realty.

She showed the Times a picture she took. The sleds look like ground penetrating radars.

“I asked what they were doing, and they said they were looking for graves,” Toole said. “I asked if they had found anything. They said they did.