History, Buried Deep: UNC Asheville History and New Media Students Use Virtual Reality to Share Local African American History

Situated in the hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, overlooking the French Broad River sits the famous Biltmore Estate. It goes without saying that the Biltmore has created its own story here in Asheville, and has perhaps fashioned itself as a beacon of Asheville’s history as well. But for the majority of locals and tourists alike, there is an underlying record of life surrounding the grounds of the Biltmore Estate: the story of the Shiloh Community.

Before the Biltmore Estate ever came to be, the Shiloh neighborhood occupied the space. Old Shiloh, as it’s known now, was located north of the estate. According to the Shiloh Community Association, the Black communities of Asheville, which included Old Shiloh, prospered through their churches, schools, and people. In the late 1880s, George Vanderbilt bought the land, relocating the residents of Shiloh and their church, both living and buried. 

Now, almost 150 years later, UNC Asheville history and new media students are teaming up to unearth the buried history of Shiloh and tell the story in a compelling new way, using virtual reality.

THE RESEARCH

Ellen Holmes Pearson, UNC Asheville’s interim vice provost and professor of history, co-founded the 828 Digital Archives for Historical Equity, a project that aims to recenter the voices of historically marginalized people in and around Western North Carolina. After assembling a group of history and new media students, Pearson and her team set out to make the African American Cemeteries of Western North Carolina Headstone Survey Database.

One student, history major Rebbecca Kelley joined the project early through one of Pearson’s hands-on classes, where students surveyed Shiloh Zion AME Church and the South Asheville St. John ‘A’ Baptist Church cemeteries.

“We went out and made maps of the cemetery and made notes of the conditions of the headstones,” said Kelley. “What was on them? What did they look like? Where were they?”

Each member of the class also researched five names found in the two cemeteries, using genealogy records and databases like Ancestry.  

One of the major aspects of the project focuses on the history of Shiloh, which has stayed largely unknown in the story of Asheville. One of the prominent figures in Shiloh was William Logan, along with his wife, Annie. The Logans owned around 24 acres of land, which they bought from the Pattons (of Patton Avenue fame) in 1874, only a few years after emancipation. Along with the Logans, other Black families bought and worked the land, totaling around 300 acres at Shiloh’s height of prominence. 

“The Shiloh church was the center of the community so to speak,” explained Kelley. “William Logan's father was actually one of the founding members, serving as the reverend at some point during the church’s years there. William then worked with Charles McNamee, who was George Vanderbilt’s agent, to basically relocate both the community and the church. First, in 1889, the church actually burnt down. Then Vanderbilt moved them to a Presbyterian church, and finally William Logan was put in charge of moving the old cemetery to the new Shiloh church.”

An interesting conundrum with moving the cemetery was the cultural practice of burial. During the late 1880s, it was more common for African American communities to use fieldstones, rather than headstones, which meant many names had been lost or eroded away by time. For Pearson and her team, finding the burial plots in the Old Shiloh cemetery was more difficult than cataloging the current cemetery, but with extended efforts from UNC Asheville students, faculty, and alumni, the information gathered was taking shape.

THE DATABASE

With the research coming into place, the names and legacies needed a digital home. Partnering with the New Media Department and its chair, Victoria Bradbury, Pearson’s team worked toward making a suitable home for such important history. 

One of the students, Tori Rigsby, reflected on the process of building out a database of cemetery residents. The data included any details from the inscription, the type, and condition of the stone, as well as dimensions and locations. The wealth of information was intentional: the team wanted to make sure researchers or descendants could find and view the members of the cemetery even without stepping foot in Asheville. 

Rigsby also worked with Catherine Cutshall, a UNC Asheville alumna who works in the Buncombe County Collections, to research the Patton-Parker Collection.

BRINGING HISTORY TO VIRTUAL LIFE

Along with Rigsby, Mike Lyles was a part of the team that focused on building out a virtual reality and augmented reality (AR) component of the project. While the history students compiled the stories and names of families within Shiloh, new media students took visuals of the cemetery and photographs of community members and created an interactive history exhibit.

The projects mainly featured AR posters that, when scanned on a phone, would provide interactive information and animated elements that enhanced the poster itself. Lyle’s team created an interactive scrapbook AR poster to examine the descendants of William Logan. Other VR projects included taking a virtual tour around the current Shiloh AME Church and the graveyard. The digital elements were hand-crafted by the new media students, and for many, it was their first foray into the world of AR creation. 

“The Pattons, of Patton Avenue, were the second largest enslavers in the county, and one of the largest in Western North Carolina,” explained Rigsby. “That's significant because the mountains are not known for enslaving activities but it actually went on quite a lot here. So the purpose of delving into their collection was to bring out the voices of the people that they enslaved, using personal correspondence and such, just to find a name. The only details we have on their lives come through their enslavers–which is the sad part about this type of research.”

“I've always really been interested in the telling of history,” said Lyles. “The way we tell history is always evolving, and I feel like this sort of evolving field fits in really well with new media, because media is also constantly changing too.”

EACH OF THE PROJECTS HAS FOUND ITS HOME ON THE AFRICAN AMERICAN CEMETERIES OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA HEADSTONE SURVEY DATABASE, WHICH IS FREE AND OPEN TO ALL WHO ARE INTERESTED IN THE HISTORY OF BLACK COMMUNITIES IN ASHEVILLE.

THE LEGACY

“The website is a powerful tool,” said Rigsby. “It’s giving descendants access to rediscover their ancestors and to connect that part of their family that they never had before. African Americans historically in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries have little to no information on their lives. So this is a path to give these people their voices again, a voice that they never had in their life. [We’ve been] entering these communities with their consent, to help them with this, to give them this. Shiloh lost all of their burial records, and we were able to make brand new ones for them through our surveys.”

This project was just one step in a larger online library of historically marginalized communities in Asheville and Western North Carolina. The information–collected and organized by the 828 Digital Archive group, with the help of the UNC Asheville community–continues to pursue its goal of supporting research that incorporates interdisciplinary scholarship into digital projects, piecing together a more inclusive and accessible tapestry of Western North Carolina’s history and culture.

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