Heavy summer rains combined with the slow-moving Tropical Storm Debby swamped Monrovia Union Cemetery, flooding grave sites and partially exposing at least one burial vault.
Some say the flooding is the latest problem in a neglected cemetery that holds the remains of more than 1,000 people, many of whom are related and veterans of America’s wars.
The relatives of people buried at Monrovia in the Charleston Neck between Interstate 26 and the Ashley River are asking who owns and maintains the soggy burial grounds, which experienced a similar flood in December 2018.
The most glaring recent water damage occurred at the grave of 63-year-old Samella Matheny of Union Heights, a loving but stern grandmother who died 35 years ago, her family said. Her family is scrambling to reinter Matheny’s remains after eroding water exposed her rose-colored casket.
“We are in the process of getting her reinterred at another cemetery that is not in a low-lying area” or finding a plot on higher ground in Monrovia, said Matheny’s granddaughter Shana Bowman, a Charleston-native who lives in Alexandria, Va. “We are going through the process, [but] we had to wait until all the rain ended … and the water subsided.
Excessive rainfall in the Lowcountry during Debby, which dumped 8 to 18 inches of rain on Charleston County, also exposed two caskets at the Canaan United Methodist Church graveyard in Ridgeville, according to the S.C. Department of Public Health (SCDPH). The storm poured between 10 to 20 inches of rain in Dorchester County, according to the National Weather Service.
A neglected cemetery
Charleston County Coroner Bobbi Jo O’Neal said Matheny’s family called her office after the recent storm exposed her casket. But O’Neal said the coroner’s office does not have jurisdiction over cemeteries. If a casket is open and “human remains are exposed, then we would get involved to take care of the [deceased] to get them secured,” she explained.
O’Neal recently visited Monrovia at the invitation of S.C. Rep. Wendell Gilliard, D-Charleston. He said he asked the coroner to meet him at the cemetery because of the potential health risk that exposed human remains can pose to people living near the cemetery.
Monrovia is about 3.7 acres of rolling high- and low-level ground contained in a chain link fence along Oceanic Avenue. Two signs along an oval-shaped driveway in the cemetery inform people whose relatives are buried there that the cemetery is non-perpetual and family members are responsible for maintaining their loved one’s burial plot.
“I don’t know when it became a non-perpetual cemetery, and I don’t think a lot of people know this,” said Bowman, the granddaughter. “As a result, there is no one mowing the lawn and taking care to make sure it is maintained.”
She is also concerned that commercial development in the Neck Area has changed the flow of groundwater toward the Ashley River. “In the last few years, we have been noticing a lot more flooding in Monrovia,” Bowman added.
Recent flooding occurred along the northern edge of the burial ground near a ditch that divides the property from the proposed 189-acre Magnolia project that could have 10,000 residents if completed.
Gilliard said neglected cemeteries are a “massive problem” in South Carolina. In 2019, he and four other House members filed a bill to give local governments the authority to require cemetery owners and operators to maintain, preserve and protect cemeteries. The bill has been stuck in committee. Gilliard said he plans to refile the bill later this year.
Confusion over who maintains and owns Monrovia
Charleston native Emmy Casey Smith of Houston, Texas, said the graves of her 87-year-old mother Jannie Casey of Congress Street and her three brothers were not affected by the recent flooding.
“This also happened back in 2018 due to flooding,” she said. “My family members were not affected then either, and it was more than several graves that came up. It is my concern that if something is not done, it will happen again.”
Smith said she called the W.M. Smith-McNeal Funeral Home in North Charleston when she was told the funeral home’s president, Bryan McNeal Jr., was in charge of the burial ground. She said McNeal referred her to Yvonne Fordham of Charleston, who is a member of an informal committee that cleans Monrovia.
McNeal told the Charleston City Paper that he is no longer associated with Monrovia.
The nonprofit Monrovia Union Cemetery Association once owned the burial grounds, according to the S.C. Secretary of State. Records show that when the association was formed in 2010, McNeal was the group’s agent. But he resigned in May 2023, records show.
“But they are currently administratively dissolved for failure to maintain a registered agent,” said Shannon A. Wiley, the secretary of state’s public information director. She added the group recently appointed a new registered agent but had not yet filed an application to reinstate its corporate status.
Fordham said Monrovia “is not being managed by anybody because the manager resigned. After that, no graves were sold there so we are trying to work without any revenue.”
Fordham, whose relatives are also buried at Monrovia, said the informal committee has worked with Charleston’s code enforcement office to keep the cemetery cleared and installed a dumpster to collect discarded items.
“We have come a long way in the last year and a half, and it is going to take time with no revenue” and only volunteers, Fordham said. “We are asking people to please come [clean] your own [family member’s] gravesite,” she said. “We’d like to eventually have [Monrovia] … look like other gravesites.”
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