This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Gilmore Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/5R.2ADI/75.355.419.642.1 Message Board Post: My reply is to the Gilmore surname. I have a mystery I am trying to solve. Here in Greene County, Pa, on the PA / WV border, in Gilmore Township, is the Gilmore Cemetery, white folks. Actually, the cemetery may just be located in WV. There are some black Gilmore in the county, or there were in years past. The mystery? The Gilmore cemetery stones are ones that probably cost a pretty sum in those days. About 25 feet south of the Gilmore markers, is a large fieldstone sitting upright with several small field stones placed around it ... similar, in my opinion, to the placement of the Gilmore stones. Is this just a random placement of fieldstones? Or could it be another cemetery, possibly of colored folk? Slaves, former slaves, runaway slaves, free people of color...people who might not have had the money to purchase tombstones. Questions that come to mind: Is it a graveyard? Who would be buried there? Since the location is south of the PA border, is it possible these Gilmore own! ed slaves? Or owned and freed their slaves? Or, since there were black Gilmore/Gilmere in the county, could there be another possible answer? Not all slaves in Greene County were registered. We can find black people almost appearing from nowhere. Runaways, possibly. Freed slaves we were not aware of, possibly. Black folk who one day were slaves, and the next day were not slaves...possibly. The gradual abolition of slavery. This message is to say there were African American Gilmores in Greene County, PA but where did they come from? Not sure if there might have been an Indian connection.