The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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Lakeside Historical Cemetery

The Lakeside Historical Cemetery, also known as the Lincoln Garden Cemetery, is at 1581 Cummings Avenue on the south side of Avon Park.[fg-lakeside] It is the historic burial ground of the town’s Black community, “a Historical Black Cemetery in use for many years” in the words of one of the two indexes that record its graves, and the only such ground at Avon Park that any source names.[bg-lincoln] On official Highlands County property appraiser tax rolls (parcel A-27-33-28-A00-0100-0000), the cemetery is held under the institutional name “AFRICAN-AMERICAN CEMETERY” and legally described as “AFRICAN-AMERICAN CEMETERY TRACT DESC IN DB 79-PG 558 6.59 ACRES,” establishing that the 6.59-acre tract was bounded and conveyed under Deed Book 79, Page 558 of the county public records.[hcpa-lakeside-parcel]

The graves

Find a Grave holds 777 memorials for the cemetery and BillionGraves 536 headstone records from 796 photographs.[fg-lakeside][bg-lincoln] The oldest deaths on the stones are of February and December 1928, 1930 and 1931, and the sequence runs without a break from the 1930s to the present.[fg-lakeside]

Among the graves is pioneer settler Cueller Phillip Peterson Sr., born at Bainbridge, Georgia, on 2 June 1888, who died at Tampa on 22 August 1967.[fg-peterson] Community oral histories and the cemetery’s restoration board often celebrate the ground as holding “the first African American born in Avon Park, Cuellar Peterson.”[hns-2025-03-10] This tradition refers to the son, Cueller Phillip Peterson Jr., who was born in the family residence at 904 South Pineland Avenue.[maxwell-1976][or-709-905-peterson-blackmon-1981] Cueller Jr. married Beatrice Brown-Peterson (1942–2020), an influential community organizer, school paraprofessional, and founder of the Avon Park Martin Luther King Jr. Walk, who passed away on 4 February 2020 and was also interred at Lakeside.[obit-beatrice-peterson-2020]

The cemetery board states that more than two dozen veterans, “some of them decorated war heroes,” are buried here alongside the community’s civic, business, and religious leaders.[hns-2025-03-10] Ernest E. Sims, the Hopewell School principal for whom a street is named, is among them; his grave is described on his own page.

The restoration

A Florida not-for-profit corporation, Lakeside Historical Cemetery of Avon Park Inc., was formed on 6 February 2013 with its principal address at the cemetery; it lapsed and was reinstated in September 2017.[sunbiz-lakeside] In the year to March 2025 it obtained federal charitable status, reconstituted its board under president Donald Gordon, and opened a website.[hns-2025-03-10]

The board went to the city in 2024. The Community Redevelopment Agency’s advisory board voted it 5,000 on 13 June 2024,[hns-2024-06-21] and in August the agency’s board took up a funding request whose first alternative was that 5,000 grant, to be spent on headstones and other work once the board supplied a scope and specifications; the president told the council that lifting and re-capping the vaults would in the end cost “well over in the one hundred thousands.”[hns-2024-08-12] The agency paid ,600 for a survey of the property that September. In May 2025 its board voted 3,000, which a councilwoman moved to raise to 0,000, for security lighting, a flagpole, a new sign on the fence and three waist-high story boards to tell “how and why the predominantly African American cemetery was created”; the councilwoman had walked the ground and found “gravestones that are broken, chipped, stained and unrecognizable” and vaults not fully buried. The board’s representative told the meeting that the cemetery was unusual in Florida in still being active, with a burial as recent as 2024, and that the next phase, cleaning, leveling and re-pouring five vaults, would be paid for by a state grant for which the Duke Energy Foundation’s 0,000 was the match, the state tripling every dollar for an economically deprived county.[hns-2025-05-12] The foundation’s gift, honored at a reception in March 2025, is to be used with the state money to repair the wrought-iron fence that once surrounded the cemetery, put up a flagpole, signage and the story boards at the entrance, and bring water and lighting to the site.[hns-2025-03-10]

References

Where this comes from

Evidence
corroborated — More than one independent source agrees.
Review
unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.
Rights
society

Sources

  1. Find a Grave contributors, Lakeside Historical Cemetery, also known as Lincoln Garden Cemetery, Avon Park, Find a Grave cemetery 2331202 (2026) · secondary
  2. BillionGraves contributors, Lincoln Garden Cemetery, Avon Park, Florida, BillionGraves cemetery 179499 (2026) · secondary
  3. Find a Grave contributors, Cueller Phillip Peterson (2 Jun 1888 - 22 Aug 1967), Lakeside Historical Cemetery, Find a Grave memorial 68359768 (2011) · secondary
  4. Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell, The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida (Held at the Avon Park Historical Society Depot Museum, Avon Park, Florida) (1976) · book
  5. BizProfile, from the Florida Department of State, Lakeside Historical Cemetery Of Avon Park Inc., document N13000001203, Florida Division of Corporations filing information (2025) · secondary
  6. Highlands News-Sun, via Spot On Florida, Lakeside Historical Cemetery awarded 5,000, Highlands News-Sun, 21 June 2024 (2024) · newspaper
  7. Diego De Jesus, Highlands News-Sun, CRA Board provides update on Lakeside Historical Cemetery, Highlands News-Sun, 12 August 2024 (2024) · newspaper
  8. Highlands News-Sun, Duke Energy funds African-American Cemetery restoration, Highlands News-Sun, 10 March 2025 (2025) · newspaper
  9. Diego De Jesus, Highlands News-Sun, CRA Board OKs 3,000 toward cemetery's renovation, Highlands News-Sun, 12 May 2025 (2025) · newspaper
  10. Highlands County Property Appraiser, Highlands County Property Appraiser Parcel A-27-33-28-A00-0100-0000, 1581 Cummings Ave, Avon Park (2026) · official
  11. Fountain Funeral Home, Beatrice (Brown) Peterson Obituary, Fountain Funeral Home, Avon Park, 4 February 2020 (2020) · secondary
  12. Highlands County Clerk of Court, Warranty Deed from Cuellar P. Peterson, Jr. and Beatrice Peterson to Christophine Blackmon, 14 December 1981 (Highlands County Clerk of the Circuit Court, Official Records Book 709, Page 905) (1981) · official

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