Fifty-five headstones from a historically Black cemetery that were found along the Potomac River in Virginia were returned to their proper burial sites, the Associated Press reports.

Virginia Senator Richard Stuart first discovered that a farm they purchased was used as a dumping site for thousands of Black gravestones from the Columbian Harmony Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

Stuart and his wife said they were stunned when they discovered the headstones near their property.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser were all in attendance for a ceremony in Caledon State Park in King George on Monday, commemorating the official transfer of the first headstones from Virginia to Maryland. The grave markers will be a part of a memorial garden at National Harmony Memorial Park in Prince George’s County honoring the 37,000 people buried at the original cemetery.

Northam expressed the importance of honoring the memories of the deceased by returning the headstones, according to reports by WUSA.

“It’s our duty to make sure these headstones are returned to the graves they were intended to mark and honor,” Northam said. “As we reckon with the many impacts of systemic racism, we must tell the full and true story of our shared history, including indignities inflicted on people of color even after death.”

The D.C. cemetery served as the last home for more than 37,000 African American residents from 1855 to 1960. Prominent people buried at the cemetery were Frederick Douglas, Phillip Reid, who helped create the Statue of Freedom in Washington D.C., Mary Ann Shadd Cary, America’s first African American female newspaper editor and many Black Union Army veterans.

By 1960, the land was sold and most of the remains were relocated to National Harmony Park in Landover, Maryland. During the relocation of the remains, the original tombstones were discarded.

According to reports, a Virginia farmer saw an ad in the Washington Newspaper for free rip-rap and began transporting truckloads of the discarded tombstones from D.C. to Virginia for two years. The farmer then began dumping the tombstones along a two-mile stretch of coastline to prevent his land from eroding into the Potomac River. Eventually, the grave markers ended up along a river of King George County, where Stuart discovered them near his home.

Currently, thousands of historic Black gravestones that once marked the remains of Black people for over a century are lost in the river banks. As a result, many graves are unmarked at a new burial ground in Maryland.

National Guard members from Maryland and Virginia plan to recover more headstones in the area where the first ones were found. The state of Virginia has also allocated $4 million for the recovery and restoration of the gravestones in the fall.

Patricia Howard-Chittams, a descendant of one of the people whose gravestones were lost, was able to touch her ancestor's headstone for the first time, NBC Washington reports.

"I don't get angry, I don't get mad, you know, because she was here,” Howard-Chittams said. “I'm the sum of her existence, which makes it even better.”

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