Augusta native brings family's history home

Carolyne Lamar Jordan calls it her “Harvard-acclaimed personality” but makes no excuses for going after what she wants.

The Augusta native who left the city nearly 60 years ago is one of several to donate items to place in a time capsule being buried Friday at Cedar Grove Cemetery, the historic resting place in Augusta for thousands of African-Americans, including many slaves.

Among those interred at Cedar Grove are Jordan’s mother, sister and paternal grandparents, Peter and Mary Lamar. Also in the family plat are Jordan’s sister and brother-in-law, Willarena Lamar Williams and Tracy Williams, both renowned Richmond County educators.

Jordan traveled to Georgia earlier this month to connect dots in the family story, including a visit to Statesboro, where her maternal grandfather, William James, was well known for improving education opportunities for black students. Two school buildings there are named for him.

“My theme is to make connections,” she said. “To get the names right, to tell the stories straight, to not have everybody thinking they’re more important than somebody else, because it’s not like that. This is where you’re all going to end up.”

The Lamar plat has suffered the wear common to many Cedar Grove graves. Only one headstone, a flat marker and a stone designating the “P.W. Lamar” section mark the site where Jordan determined nine family members were buried.

“We’re going to have everybody’s name here, including my grandfather,” said Jordan, 79. “We’re going to put a name on every one of these people.”

A recent community effort sparked by the bicentennial of Cedar Grove and adjacent Magnolia Cemetery, built for white residents, has led to an uptick in maintenance at the city-owned cemeteries, but many markers remain broken or missing at Cedar Grove after decades of neglect by the city and family members.

Conditions at the cemetery are due in part to the migration of many black Augustans out of the city, she said.

“We’ve never showed up. We all went north,” she said.

Jordan has written a brief family history and included a copy to place in the time capsule, in addition to copies of report cards and her diploma from Harvard, where she received a doctorate in human development in the school of education.

For the capsule, “I didn’t play,” said Jordan, who also has a master’s degree from the New England Conservatory of Music, where she majored in harpsichord.

Her education began at the Haines Institute, founded by Lucy Craft Laney, though it closed when Jordan was in third grade. She graduated from Lucy Craft Laney High School, then Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., where she met her husband of 58 years, Lawrence Jordan, a physicist with a doctorate from Princeton University.

Jordan’s grandfather Peter Lamar, born in 1861, worked as a lineman on the Augusta-Southern, Florida Central and Peninsular, Columbia and Greenville and Charlotte Columbia and Augusta railroads, Jordan said.

“I have right here his passes, which were like union cards,” she said. “People don’t believe that in 1916 a black man was an educated man wiring the stuff.”

Lamar was also a successful businessman and sold property to Laney for the Haines Institute’s new campus on Gwinnett Street in 1901, the year his son was born, Jordan said. The property is now the location of Laney High School, and Gwinnett Street is called Laney-Walker Boulevard.

His son, Peter William Lamar, Jr., was a Pullman porter and a successful businessman who owned a coal company. He was active with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and traveled extensively, including a 1939 trip with his family to the World’s Fair in New York, according to Jordan’s biography. His information is at the National Pullman Porter Museum in Chicago, Jordan said.

Jordan encouraged other Cedar Grove families to care for their gravesites.

“Please do think about what you’ve done about your families and if you’ve neglected them,” she said.

Jordan’s interest and visit to Augusta is a “historian’s dream” and a boon for the cemetery, said Joyce Law, a program manager at Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History.

“To have people who lived in the city and then come back to check on the sacred grounds, to establish strong relationships with historical societies, to get the correct information about family legacies, this is a historian’s dream,” Law said.

The visit furthers the I Love Augusta organization's initiative to get more family members involved in cemetery preservation, Law said. The organization was founded by former Commissioner Moses Todd.

“Not only the cemetery’s physical conditions but also the family stories, so future generations can benefit from these narratives,” she said.

Augusta Recreation and Parks and the I Love Augusta organization will bury time capsules Friday at the historic Cedar Grove and Magnolia cemeteries.

Items including historical artifacts and documents have been donated to go in the capsules, according to a city news release.

The capsules are not yet sealed and more items can be added, said former Commissioner Moses Todd, who founded the I Love Augusta group. Donations are going through the Augusta Museum of History and the Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History, but the capsules are scheduled for closure Wednesday, he said.

The Cedar Grove burial is scheduled for 10 a.m. Friday at the cemetery at 120 Watkins St. The Magnolia capsule will be buried at 10:45 a.m. at the cemetery at 702 Third St.

For more information, contact cemetery records clerk Jerry Murphy at (706) 821-1746.

Cemetery time capsules to be buried Friday