We continue our look at local gravestone symbolism with today’s post about Lamb Stevens (ca. 1766-1868). He is buried in Cherry Hill Community Cemetery, located directly next to the fairgrounds in Ladson.
Lamb Stevens, a Black man, was born in North Carolina in about 1766. He purchased his freedom and came to South Carolina; the order of these events isn’t precisely known. Stevens was in the Charleston area by 1833, when an ad searching for a runaway enslaved person was published in his name. In 1858, Stevens purchased Cherry Hill Plantation in modern-day Ladson. Stevens had substantial wealth and land holdings; in the 1860 “slave schedule,” he is listed as also owning 13 enslaved people. Stevens lived to approximately 102 years old and left his properties to his family.
Photo by Brandon Coffey.
Stevens’s grave marker is the oldest legible in Cherry Hill Cemetery. The marker is topped with an engraving of a willow tree covering two gravestones. A willow tree was one of the most popular 19th-century gravestone symbols. The willow may represent grief and memory, but also the immortality granted in the afterlife.
The marker reads:
IN
Memory of
LAMB STEVENS
Died 23rd Sept. 1868.
Aged 102 Years.