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Gus Foley, of Westminster, a senior computer science major at McDaniel College, brushes flour off of head stones at an African-American cemetery. The students rub flour on the head stones to make the carvings easier to read. McDaniel College students, under the guidance of chemistry professor Rick Smith, are working to document grave sites in an African-American cemetery in Libertytown, Md. Photo by: Kenneth K. Lam/The Baltimore Sun

In Libertytown on a steep hillside up the street from an auto repair shop, a group of McDaniel College students are piecing together long-forgotten lives.  The students pull back bramble, trim branches and press flour into tombstones carved a century or more ago. They are trying to uncover the details of the lives of some of the early African-American residents of this small Frederick County town.
“They were forgotten, but we’re bringing their names back,” said junior Emoff Amofa, 21, who is taking professor Rick Smith’s January session class on tracing family histories.  Among those buried on this hillside are Alfred B. Roberts, a sergeant who fought with the United States Colored Infantry in Civil War; Ellen Mayberry, who died in 1885 “in hope of a glorious resurrection”; and little Margaret E. Stanton, who was just 3 when she died in 1886.
For the next three weeks, the students will be seeking to document the lives of inhabitants of John Wesley Church cemetery, many of whom were buried in the decades after the Civil War.