Research Assistant.

That he lives in the center of Williamsburg, only blocks from the College, but has three graves in his backyard doesn't seem to disturb the composure of Matt Mainor. Not long after he moved to Newport Avenue, about seven years ago, he heard from a neighbor, Alfred Armstrong, the story that many people along the street had heard, that they lived close to a burying ground used in 1918 for victims of the famous influenza epidemic.Only recently, however, has it been possible to ferret out the details of the Bucktrout Cemetery where, from 1918 to 1928, two dozen or more people, black and white, were buried in a potters field on the Bucktrout Farm. The stories of the people buried there, as I know them, are brief, very brief.And they might have been lost totally had it not been for a gift to Swem Library of the College of William and Mary. That generous gift by the Bucktrout Funeral Home--six volumes of funeral records covering the years 1916 to 1945--tells us what little is known of the people whose bodies were laid to rest in downtown Williamsburg.

Bucktrout Cemetery was opened at a time of terrible stress on Williamsburg following the establishment and incredibly rapid expansion of a major munitions factory operated by DuPont at the village of Penniman, now Cheatham Annex, some six miles from Williamsburg. At the height of World War I, in January 1918, DuPont announced that by the summer the number of men building the plant at Penniman would be increased from 1,000 to 3,000 or 4,000, all to construct a new village with a bank, a YMCA, a post office, a hotel, a railway depot, a hospital, restaurants, and some 250 homes for workers and their families.

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