Rose Cemetery

Rose Cemetery, established in the early 1900s, is the oldest African American cemetery in Pinellas County, created during segregation when Black residents from Clearwater to New Port Richey needed a burial ground of their own. It holds the graves of nineteenth-century Black hook spongers, community and church leaders, and Richard Quarls, an African American Confederate Civil War veteran; incomplete records and years of neglect have left many graves unmarked or unidentified. The cemetery is now the subject of active local preservation efforts and has been added to area school curricula on Black history. Paranormal investigators who have visited report EVP recordings, including a woman identifying herself as Pinkie and a child's voice, along with a generally unsettled feeling locals associate with the grounds.