Please join us in congratulating John N Smith Cemetery Restoration and Preservation Inc on the grand opening of their Outdoor Museum at John N Smith Cemetery. Through a grant from AARP and several private donations, JNSRP has added benches, landscaping and educational signs to the cemetery. The intent is to make the cemetery an inviting place that shares the history and life stories of those who are interred there. The signs catalog a few of the contributions that Black citizens have made to the community and the nation by serving as veterans, educators and business owners.  

Southport Historical Society contributed to the Outdoor Museum by donating a sign at the entrance to the cemetery. This sign provides an overview of the lives of several of the Southport citizens interred at John N Smith cemetery including Abram Galloway who served in the USCT during the Civil War and later became the head of the Brunswick County Republican Party; Elias “Nehi” Gore who stood over seven feet tall and was known as Southport’s “Gentle Giant”. He was a menhaden fisherman who helped build Liberty ships at the Wilmington Shipyard during WWII; and Mary Ann Galloway, the oldest woman in North Carolina at the time of her death. She spent over 40 years enslaved on a plantation in Smithville Township and then spent over 70 years as a free woman, working as a self-employed laundress until the time of her death.

These, and other stories are commemorated at the new self-guided Outdoor Museum. 225 E. Leonard St.