Finally, a smooth road for Boston Hill Cemetery

Longtime Oviedo resident Ida Boston sat on a plastic folding chair facing toward Boston Hill Cemetery the morning of July 27, greeted by a hint of blue sky and sun from behind the clouds in the early morning. 

Adorned in her dark blue Oviedo Citizens in Action shirt, in which she serves as a member, she gazed past a gathering of city officials and various community members into the cemetery where many of her family members are now buried. 

When she’d previously visited the cemetery, her journey would begin by going down an unpaved road described as “the worst road there is”.

But that morning, Ida Boston held a neatly folded piece of a blue ribbon she’d helped cut earlier in a ceremony to honor the completion of the Boston Cemetery Road repaving, something she could only describe as “such a blessing.” 

“I’ll keep this and frame it,” Boston said with a smile, patting the ribbon piece fondly. 

The ribbon cutting ceremony saw nearly 40 attendees, including members of Oviedo City Council, Oviedo Citizens in Action and the Antioch Missionary Baptist Church, gather to help cut the ribbon celebrating the newly paved Boston Cemetery Road. 

A group of citizens and local leaders cut the ribbon in celebration of the newly paved Boston Cemetery Road. (Photo by Kathryn Brudzinsky)

Ida Boston said she and other community members have spent many years waiting for the day of the repaving to come. 

“We’ve been working so hard trying to get this done,” Ida Boston said. “All the Boston family that are in [the cemetery] have gone, but we’re here and we can see it and just enjoy it. Just enjoy coming out, looking at the graves and know that everything is okay.”

Ida Boston’s late husband’s grandfather was Prince Butler Boston, the son of a Georgia slave owner. After the citrus freeze in the 1890s Boston’s father left his Oviedo land to Boston, who donated five acres of it to Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in 1927 – land the cemetery occupies today. 

He did so with the intent of offering Oviedo’s Black community a place to bury their dead in the face of segregation, additionally offering funeral services free of charge. 

Also in attendance was Janice Boston, another member of Oviedo Citizens in Action whose late husband was also the grandchild of Prince Butler Boston. She said seeing the road finished felt like an improvement upon the family legacy. 

“I’m sure that Prince Butler Boston is looking down on us and his legacy, to me, has been upgraded,” Janice Boston said. “They just wanted to provide a place for the Black community to have a place to bury their dead, and now they’re coming in on the smooth road.”

Up until now, the road, which runs beside Oviedo’s City Hall off of Alexandria Boulevard, was gravel, pocked with holes and crumbling on the sides. 

“The community had been pushing for the road to be paved because it was dirt, it was uneven, it was muddy,” said Antioch Church administrator Stanley Stone. “And so every time that we had a funeral at Boston Cemetery, if it rained it was just not in a good condition.”

A little over a decade ago, the city began using asphalt millings to attempt to make the cemetery road more drivable for visitors. Still, problems persisted. 

“Just the one lane coming in and if it rained with the potholes and everything … coming out to bury family members, you’re wondering oh my god I hope it’s going to be passable,” Janice Boston said. “Now we don’t have to worry about that.”

She said when she and other community members originally discussed paving the road nearly 25 years ago with city officials, they were met with resistance. 

“They were saying the cemetery was not in the city limits so the city didn’t feel an ownership or responsibility to do this,” Janice Boston said. 

Mayor Megan Sladek spoke to the crowd prior to the ribbon cutting, detailing how the cemetery was previously an enclave before a 5-0 vote by Oviedo City Council to annex it into the city in March last year.  

“Part of the process was making sure that this little donut hole that was surrounded on every side by the City of Oviedo was included,” Sladek said. “I think that’s an important part to share to remind us that everybody’s welcome in Oviedo, and I’m so glad that we are here today.”

Sladek said one of the first obstacles to paving the road was figuring out funding, which eventually came to fruition through the usage of the city’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) reserve. With construction and design included, the total project allocation amounted to $516,804. 

“At first, we didn’t have a way to pay for it,” Sladek said during an interview with OCN after the ceremony. “Of course we wanted to do it, but it’s not inexpensive. Once we were able to find the funding, then we could get the engineering and begin the process.”

Part of this process included the discovery of a group of 10 unmarked graves beneath the road found through the use of sonar technology as previously reported by OCN, which Stone said brought the project temporarily to a halt while the church worked to carefully remove the remains. 

“What we ended up doing was opening a grave on the Boston cemetery site that is owned by the church,” Stone said. “We put the remains in a [cemetery] vault, and we did the proper thing, covered them up, sealed them up.”

Stone said the only identifiable item found during the exhuming process was a metal marker, but that no longtime residents were able to pinpoint the identity of who it might’ve been for. 

The total process took them several months and even involved a funeral home consultation, Stone said. 

“We wanted to make sure that the remains that we took out of there were with dignity,” Stone said. “We wanted to make sure it was done properly and in order.”

Sladek said the Oviedo Preservation Project is now working on a grant to place a historic marker for the cemetery, something she hopes might help with local historic tourism. 

“We’re doing it at the state level not the county level so it’s going to be listed … in a national database,” Sladek said.

Ida and Janice Boston said they’re both grateful for the newly paved road, especially for their frequent visits. They laughed as they described themselves as the cemetery’s resident “grave tenders.” 

“Grandchildren and great grandchildren have legacies,” Janice Boston said. “The legacy for them lives on and when they see this, they don’t have to be ashamed coming down the road.”

For the Boston family at least, it’s certain the project’s outcome was a welcome one.  

Now, it seems both members of the community and the Boston family can finally rest easy knowing a piece of their history has been given the attention and accessibility it deserves.

“His grave is right over there,” Janice Boston added, pointing to where Prince Butler Boston himself was buried in 1947. “He’s looking down, as are all of the others who contributed. He planted, and some of us watered, and now it has come to full growth. Isn’t that something?”