Strangers Graveyard in Winston-Salem, North Carolina

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Get directions Midkiff Rd
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA

Coordinates: 36.15498, -80.30938
Cemetery ID:

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About these numbers These percentages indicate the number of Find a Grave memorials that have a grave photo or GPS coordinates. We don't know the total number of burials in a cemetery, so we cannot calculate a percentage of those with memorials, photos or GPS coordinates.

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During the fever epidemic of 1759 the Moravians laid out the Strangers Graveyard for non-Moravians living at the nearby mill fort, using the traditional Moravian custom of facing the graveyard east, divided into four sections, with women to the north, men to the south, and girls located under women and boys under men. After the Bethabara God's Acre, this is the second oldest graveyard in Forsyth County.

In 1769 the Moravians turned the graveyard over to the Dobbs Parish for administration and record keeping. The smaller 1759 graveyard contains all burials before 1759,

as well as a number after 1769 until at least the 1840s. There are a number of graves, especially for boys, outside the Strangers Graveyard, in the larger Dobbs Parish Graveyard.

Numbered stakes (also included in the grave description) identify the graves. There are a few stones which remain, but they are very old and hard to read. The number identification of the graves is based upon archaeological and documentation research. Many burials are presently unidentified, especially for the later period, in the Dobbs Parish Graveyard. For a number of years this graveyard was owned and cared for in the Kent and Speas families.

The steep bank at the bottom of the graveyard is one side of the colonial road to Salisbury, NC.

Today the graveyard site is located within an open canopy hardwood forest which abruptly shifts to a pine forest south and west of a low berm bordering the site on the south and west sides.

This historic graveyard is no longer in use. Locationed in the west greenway section of the city's Historic Bethabara Park, north of Reynolda Rd and south of Bethabara Park Blvd.

In 1769 the Moravians turned the graveyard over to the Dobbs Parish for administration and record keeping. The smaller 1759 graveyard contains all burials before 1759,

as well as a number after 1769 until at least the 1840s. There are a number of graves, especially for boys, outside the Strangers Graveyard, in the larger Dobbs Parish Graveyard.

The steep bank at the bottom of the graveyard is one side of the colonial road to Salisbury, NC.

Today the graveyard site is located within an open canopy hardwood forest which abruptly shifts to a pine forest south and west of a low berm bordering the site on the south and west sides.

This historic graveyard is no longer in use. Locationed in the west greenway section of the city's Historic Bethabara Park, north of Reynolda Rd and south of Bethabara Park Blvd.