What began as the Parish Graveyard was extended westward to the street and designated in 1816 as the resting place for all African Americans, Moravian or not, who died in and around Salem. From that time, Christian whites were buried in God's Acre at the upper end of Church Street. Between 1816 and 1859, when the graveyard was closed to new interments, 108 African Americans, both enslaved and free, were buried there. Most graves were probably marked with fieldstones or wooden markers, and some showed African-inspired decoration. At least 32 were memorialized with carved steatite or marble stones inscribed in Moravian fashion with the person's name, birth and death dates, and sometimes place of birth and age. Several stones bore the letters W.A., for Wachovia Administration, indicating people owned by the Moravian Church. When Moravians segregated their graveyards, they directed that all African Americans, Christian and non-Christian, Moravian and non-Moravian, be buried in this extension of the old Parish Graveyard for Strangers. For Salem's black Moravians, whose rituals such as the Easter Sunrise Service required a Christian space, archaeological and historical research suggests that Christians were buried north of the east-west walkway and all others to the south. North of the walkway, children were buried to the east and adults to the west, and the adults were further divided, with Moravian church members in the eastern half of the adult section and non-Moravians in the western half. South of the walkway, at least 92 individuals, adults and children not recognized by the Church as Christians, including freed men and women, itinerants, factory workers, and perhaps confessed Christians considered insincere in their faith, were apparently buried side by side in the order of death. In 1913, for unknown reasons, the few gravestones in the cemetery were pulled up and the churchyard was landscaped, leaving no visible trace of the graveyard. In 1994, archaeologists recovered 31 gravestones from beneath the church steps and hallway. The graveyard has been partially excavated, archaeologists have identified the locations of 90 graves, replicas have been placed on a few graves where specific individuals have been identified, and the remaining grave sites are marked with modern stones indicating whether the individual was an adult or child.