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Avondale Cemetery resides in Flint, Genesee County, Michigan. There are many reinterments here from other cemeteries in the area. The oldest standing stone is from 1829. Though "operated and cared for" by Covenant Cemetery Services, the burying ground is full of broken stones and disrepair.
"This sad, haphazard cemetery is full of crumbling headstones and toppled monuments that no one cares enough to repair. In recent years the cemetery has been vandalized repeatedly. These vandals not only damaged physical stones but destroyed parts of Flint’s history and heritage. Many of the stones damaged were over one hundred years old.
Modern cemeteries are carefully planned and mapped out. Avondale is a scattered mess. Plots and stones are everywhere with no rhyme or reason. Some of this may be due to the old Flint Cemetery residents being disinterred and reburied in Avondale in the 1950s when the city moved roads and a hotel was built on top of the old cemetery grounds."
"Avondale represents people of all walks of life from Flint, from the mayor to the working person," said David White, president of the Genesee County Historical Society. "It's very unnerving to see the damage because it's so disrespectful to the buried and so costly to repair." (The Flint Journal May 7, 2015)
https://www.haunted-flint.com/2021/06/a-visit-to-avondale-cemetery-...
Contained within Avondale is another cemetery: Aventine.
"Aventine and Avondale Cemeteries are located on the near east side of Flint, just east of downtown. You’ve probably driven past them thousands of times and never noticed these old, abandoned, unkept, and largely ignored pieces of old Flint history as you drive by on I-475 or southbound Chavez. Nestled at the corner of Geneseret and SB Chavez, bounded on the south by the old McDonald Dairy and on the north by the Armory, Aventine is largely surrounded by Avondale which stretches to the west bordering the rear of properties along E. Boulevard Drive.
Aventine Cemetery, the smaller of the two cemeteries, came to be as a family burial plot on the family farm just outside of the then Village of Flint. During the early years of the Civil War (1861-1862) the farm became a Civil War mustering ground for the nearby area. Named Camp Thomson after Col. Edward Thomson who organized the Michigan 10th Cavalry, their camp was on this property from the east shore of the Flint River to what was then Richfield Road, now Chavez Drive, to Gilkey Creek. The camp was abandoned when the soldiers mustering there went south and to war."
Other burying grounds that gave up their dead to be relocated in Avondale:
"Flint City Cemetery (Hill Top) was established in 1842 when Flint was still a village.
Old City Cemetery was located at the corner of Avon and Richfield Road (now Chavez Drive). Roughly encompassing the area north of Longway where the Social Security office and Holiday Inn now stand. By the 1950s trash and overgrown weeds had taken over as City Cemetery had been abandoned.
The city decided to redevelop the land.
The property was sold to Albert J Koerts in 1958. The remaining bodies of the old City Cemetery were reburied in Avondale along with 122 grave markers. the more prominent citizens of Flint that had been buried at City Cemetery were moved to Glenwood Cemetery on Court Street. Leaving the Middle and Lower classes of their day to be moved to Avondale and New City Cemetery.
Around 1200 remains were reinterred at the New Flint City Cemetery at the corner of Linden Rd and Pasadena Avenue. Around 925 of the remains were unknowns. Bodies had been buried on top of each other. Some of the remains exhumed were wearing buckskins. Records of who had been buried at Old City Cemetery were destroyed by a fire at the old City Hall.
The section where the gravestones were moved inside Avondale is called Pioneer’s Row. The stones are arranged in two, close together rows, in a way that suggests, unfortunately, that stones and bones may not correspond to one another.
Later, in 1985, the remains of more than twenty-four bodies were found during construction of the basement of Holiday Inn Express on Longway Boulevard. They were eventually reburied at the New Flint City Cemetery.
Rumors abound that only the gravestones were moved to Avondale, meaning the remains of some of Flint’s earliest residents may still be lost under Flint buildings and parking lots. We may never know the complete truth."
https://focov.org/2021/06/honoring-flints-pioneers-a-little-at-a-time/