Object description

The Mount Olive-Bedford Chapel Cemetery is a historic cemetery in rural White County, Arkansas, northeast of Mount Vernon on Manning Road. It was founded in the 1880s, and is the only surviving remnant of an African-American community called "The Colony". It occupies 1.9 acres of basically level ground, and has 86 known burials. Of those, 58 are marked in some way, by some combination of head and foot stones. There are likely more burials on the property. The property includes the Mount Olive Baptist Church, a small clapboarded wood-frame building which has elements dating to the community's founding. The cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2019.