Captina African Methodist Episcopal Cemetery preserves evidence of a once thriving African American farming community established in the 1820s. With the aid of community leader Alexander "Sandy" Harper (c.1804-1889), Captina, originally called Guinea, became a stop on the Underground Railroad, a secret national network of volunteers who directed slaves northward. Harper is buried here along with Benjamin Oliver McMichael (1865-1941), an educator who taught for twelve years in Captina/Flatrock at a segregated schoolhouse. The cemetery contains 113 known burials, including nine Civil War veterans. An African Methodist Episcopal Church was established at this site in 1825 to serve the community. Many of its members later left Captina to work in cities, but the church continued services until 1962, after which the building fell into disrepair and collapsed in a windstorm in 1978.
