FindAGrave did not have a picture of her grave at Flushing Cemetery, nor was there any sense that anyone had visited her page. She had no heirs. No flowers, no tribute or anything. Since I was going to be near there on successive weekends for my son’s baseball workouts at Game162, I thought I’d snap a photo of the grave of Anna Barnes, once a well known figure in Queens Republican circles during the Depression, but now lost to time and without even a photo of her grave. A photo of her grave would be my first contribution on that website. The person working at the desk gave me a map indicating the area where her grave was located. It seemed simple enough.
Since I knew that George Upton Harvey, the first Republican borough president of Queens who served from 1929-1941, was also buried in this cemetery, I asked for information about how to find his grave, too. Harvey’s FindAGrave page did not include a picture of his grave, either, but as a public figure and a decorated veteran, there are pictures of Harvey, articles about his death, and other evidence that he would not be forgotten. Obviously, it was not for lack of interest but I was curious why Harvey, an actual war hero whose obituary was published in the New York Times, does not have a photograph of his grave on Find A Grave.
Most of the people I look up while doing my research have photographs of their graves already available. More than a year earlier, I created a FindAGrave account for the purpose of photographing graves for the many people who request photos of their ancestors’ graves. As I live in a section of Queens close to several cemeteries, I thought it would be a fun way to get out and away from my desk. But after my sister died in September 2024, I found it hard to go to cemeteries. It was a few months before I was able to do any writing and visiting cemeteries was a low priority. But because two Republican leaders from the same period, Anna Barnes and George Harvey, were buried in Flushing Cemetery and neither had photos, Flushing Cemetery became a destination early in 2025 when I made a series of trips there to look for the graves …[asdfjkl;]
Borough President Harvey was elected first in 1928 and then again the next year, then he was elected every four years until he served out his last term in 1942, losing his last reelection battle after perhaps finally wearing out his welcome.
That was the year that Anna Barnes, the Secretary of the Queens County Republican Committee, the highest ranking woman of African ancestry when she served in the 1930s and 1940s. She had been a leader of the Colored Republican Club of Jamaica in the 1920s, and also a founding member of the Jamaica branch of the NAACP. For seemingly her entire adult life she had been a secretary of various evangelistic societies of the AME church and an important figure in the Allen AME church after her husband Charles Barnes died.
As late as the fall of 1942, the Queens County Republican Executive Committee was meeting in her home.
So, I was disturbed to find no headstone, nor any sense that she was not buried in a mass grave, something I was told was quite possible.