Prior to the meeting, join John Abney as he presents an encore presentation of his 2014 program, Witnesses to History – Stories from Park View Cemetery.  Created as a paupers’ cemetery in the late 1850s, the cemetery later became the initial resting place of hundreds of Union soldiers who died while stationed in the Arcadia Valley during the Civil War.  After their bodies were disinterred and removed to Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, the cemetery became the final resting place for at least 300 people of African American descent.  The presentation tells the story of the cemetery and of the Lax family, one of the families with many family members buried there.