Ausborn and Mariah Dunstan.

by Lisa Y. Henderson

The headstones of Ausborn Dunstan and wife, Maria Dunstan, are found in Row E of Rest Haven Cemetery, Wilson, North Carolina’s African-American cemetery.  Unless reinterred from Rountree cemetery –  the earlier graveyard serving Wilson’s black folks, abandoned circa 1950 – they are among the earliest burials in Rest Haven.

Though both were free-born, and accordingly not subject to legislation creating a path to legitimation of slave marriages, Orsborn Dunson and Mariah Monday registered their five-year marriage on 24 August 1866 in Wilson County.

In the 1860 census of Wilson, Wilson County:  Asburn Dunstan, 23, laborer, in the household of H.L. Winton, who kept a boarding house.

In the 1850 census of North Side of the Neuse, Wayne County: Moriah Munda, 9, black, listed as farmhand in the household of John G. Barnes, 33, white, farmer.

Image