Forest Home Cemetery

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Historical Marker #2094 in Jefferson County notes the location of Forest Home Cemetery, one of the oldest African American cemeteries in Kentucky.

Forrest Home Cemetery would not exist were it not for one of the individuals buried there: Eliza Curtis Hundley Tevis. Born into slavery in Virginia about 1802, Tevis was brought to Kentucky by her owners, John B. and Thomas C. Hundley. One account claims that Eliza was a mistress of John Hundley. Whatever the relationship with the family, Eliza was manumitted in 1833, upon the death John Hundley.

Five years later, Thomas Hundley’s will provided Tevis with special benefits. It stated, "I give and devise to a yellow woman now living with me called Eliza or Eliza Curtis my house and lot on Green Street . . . together with the use of the alley adjoining the same for and during her natural life either to live in or rent out." In addition, Thomas Hundley provided Eliza with $2,000, a significant sum of money at the time. Eliza apparently used some of that money to purchase her sister, Mary, from the Hundley heirs.

Eliza married Henry Tevis, a free man of color, in 1843. The business-minded Tevis protected her assets by having a prenuptial agreement drawn up. The couple purchased forty acres in 1851 that had formerly been part of the Hundley plantation. As an antebellum free black couple, the Tevises were quite unique. Along with this property they also owned two lots in Louisville and six enslaved individuals. It is not know if those people were relatives.

After the Civil War, some of the Tevis land was sold or rented to newly freed African Americans. This area became known as Petersburg, named for a former slave of George Hikes who settled near the Tevis property. Being a religious woman, Eliza Tevis helped establish the Forest Baptist Church, the community’s congregation, in 1867. Two years later, when Henry Tevis died, he left the farm to Eliza, which only added to the personal wealth that she had accumulated prior to their marriage.

Eliza Tevis’s death date is not known for certain, but was likely in the 1880s. She was buried in a cemetery near her home that is thought to have once been a plantation slave cemetery on the old Hundley property. That resting place is now called Forest Home Cemetery and is a legacy of Eliza Curtis Hundley Tevis.

The marker reads:

Forest Home Cemetery
Forest Home Cemetery evolved from an old slave burial ground and is final resting place of Eliza Curtis Hundley Tevis (ca. 1802-84) and other early settlers of Petersburg community. Tevis was born a slave but gained freedom in 1833. She and her husband Henry purchased 40 acres in Wet Woods, where Tevis had lived for many years. Presented by African American Heritage Foundation.

Tevis was a significant African American landowner in antebellum Jefferson County. After the Civil War, the Tevis property and 40 adjacent acres purchased by Peter Laws were subdivided by 1880 to form rural African American community of Petersburg. Forest Home Cemetery is located near site of Tevis home and is one of the oldest dedicated African American burial grounds in Ky.

The marker was dedicated in October 2002.