BLYTHEWOOD – A line of cars with license plates from New York, Georgia and beyond slowly turned off Kinsler Road on the western edge of Blythewood 29016 and through an open farm gate into a 400-acre horse farm where rolling fields, manicured to the nines, glistened green in the bright afternoon sunshine as far as the eye could see.
As the cars parked in the grassy field, the folks stepping out of them laughed quietly and hugged each other, then walked somberly toward a clump of tall pines that shaded a circle of ground marked with granite stones topped with small vases of flowers. The visitors milled about in the shade, pausing reverently at each stone.
The stones marked the graves of their ancestors – slaves who lived and died on this land hundreds of years ago. The cool, shaded cemetery, in its simplicity, was as breathtaking as the contrasting sunny green pastures around it, dotted with giant cross-country horse jumps and riding arenas – a horseman’s paradise.
Mary Burnside, the farm’s owner, greeted the visitors, one by one and welcomed them warmly. It was apparent there was already a strong bond between Burnside and her guests.
Except for Burnside, the people buried and the people visiting the buried – both white and African-American – belonged to one family – the Kinsler family.
They had gathered for their third family reunion since 2017, to honor their ancestors.
At 10 a.m. last Saturday, everyone took their seats beneath white tents. while a spokesperson for the gathering, welcomed the 150 or so family members and guests.
Burnside, as she had done at the two previous reunions, recalled how her late husband, Richard (Dick) Burnside, accidentally discovered the graves when he was bush hogging the land some 50 years ago.
In the disturbed soil, there were many small stone columns driven into the ground as grave markers, Burnside said, as she related how her husband felt an obligation to repair the stones he had hit and to mark them clearly so that they would not be hit again.
While Dick Burnside didn’t know who the people were that were buried on his property, he began caring for the cemetery, something he would continue to do until his death in 2018. He did not, at the time, know if anyone would ever be able to tell him just who, exactly, these people were.
Fast forward about 30 years when Brenda Kinsler (who is African-American) of Washington, D.C. and Charlie Smith (who is white) of Charleston, S.C., met online while researching their separate family histories.
“It didn’t take long before we realized that our ancestors were the same family – the Kinsler family – who had lived on the Burnside property since the 17th century, until it was purchased by the Burnsides in the 1970’s,” Kinsler said.
In their research, they learned that prior to the Burnsides owning the land, it was owned by Smith’s great, great, great grandfather, John Herman Kinsler, and that Brenda Kinsler was a descendent of Africans slaves who were owned by John Herman Kinsler and, therefore, bore his name.
Brenda Kinsler’s and Charles Smith’s remarkable story did not end with the discovery of their family lineage. Their story went on to reunite all the descendants of John Herman Kinsler – both his African-American descendants and his Swiss-German descendants.
In 2004, Kinsler’s and Smith’s research took them to the Cedar Creek community where the Burnside farm is located – specifically to Kinsler Road. They wanted to see where their ancestors had been enslaved. During that first trip, they visited a few related properties in the area of the cemetery looking for clues as to where the Kinsler slaves were buried.
“I was hoping to find the cemetery of my ancestors,” Brenda Kinsler said. At her urging, she and Smith pulled up to the Burnside’s farm and knocked on the door to ask if any old cemeteries were on the property.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” Burnside reportedly responded.
“His face lit up,” Smith wrote in a memoir, “and he said, ‘Give me a minute and I’ll get my truck and show you right now.’ It was a toss-up who was more excited at that moment, Brenda and I, who had information and no cemetery or Mr. Burnside who had a cemetery and no information,” Smith recalled, with a laugh.
That chance meeting on the internet more than a decade ago has since changed the entire dynamic of a family born into the South Carolina slave-holding culture and it gave the man who had tended that sacred space an answer to the question of just who these people were who were buried on his land.
After Burnside’s death, the care and keeping of the slave cemetery has been continued by his wife, Mary, a longtime horsewoman in the Blythewood community who keeps a stable of horses across the road from the cemetery.
To show their gratitude for what the Burnsides have done for their ancestors’ graves, slave descendent Keith Kinsler presented Mary Burnside – at the 2017 reunion – with a Kinsler family tee shirt, declaring her an official member of the Kinsler family.
A plaque, donated by Burnside, was then unveiled to commemorate the cemetery and the Kinsler slaves buried there.
A book about the Kinsler family and their ancestors, by Cynthia White, titled ‘From Whence We Came – a history of the African-American Kinslers – is available online from Amazon books.
“We would love to help others do what we have done, to find our ancestors and to know where they lived and where they
The History
Descendents of the enslaved ancestors of the Kinsler family of Richland County, S.C. and Marion County, Fl. gathered at the Burnside Farm on Kinsler Road in Blythewood on Saturday for a celebration of family remembrance and thanksgiving.
Participants in this event were descendents of Daniel and Katie Kinsler, who were enslaved by John Herman Kinsler at his Richland County, and Marion County plantations.
At the end of the American Civll War, many African American members of the Kinsler family remained in the Ocala, Florida area, but it seems they were aware that they had close family members in South Carolina.
In the early 2000s Brenda Kinsler, a descendant of Daniel and Katie Kinsler, met Charlie Smith, a third great grandson of the Kinsler family’s enslaver, John Herman Kinsler, who was at different times in the 19th century a State Representative, State Senator, Trustee of South Carolina College (later USC)and signer of the Ordinance of Secession.
Brenda Kinsler and Charlie Smith have collaborated on their mutual family history for nearly 25 years and have become the unofficial historians of the family.
Since beginning their research, several additional allied Kinsler branches have been located and included in the reunion planning.
The cemetery, now the property of Mary Burnside, contains the graves of at least thirteen Kinslers, some of which are marked with early granite post-like markers under a grove of trees near Harmon Creek.
This year’s gathering and celebration was held in conjunction with the Kinsler family reunion at the Springhill Suites Hotel in downtown Columbia the same weekend.
