It sits quietly amid the flow of commuting students, most of whom probably aren't even aware of its existence.
T.J. Rigsbee Family Graveyard, a privately owned cemetery composed of 14 headstones and surrounded by a three-foot-high stone wall, is nestled smack dab in the middle of the Blue Zone parking lot and overlooks the second lot closest to Wallace Wade Stadium.
For those who do notice it, however, the cemetery lingers on-a curious reminder that the West Campus students know wasn't always the home of towering academic buildings and bustling students, but was once the home of one of Durham's most prosperous families.
The Rigsbee estate, graveyard included, stretched across 600 acres of forest and fertile farm land at the height of the family's prominence.
The primary Rigsbee home stood on the left side of the current Blue Zone and Jesse Rigsbee later built a log cabin on the present-day site of Duke Hospital. According to family lore, the family's hogs once slopped on the spot where Duke football now competes.
The Rigsbees raised sweet potatoes.Four of them fought in the Civil War, and one, Henry Rigsbee, is referred to on his grave marker as the "benefactor of Durham's first free school."
Before Thomas J. Rigsbee, Jr., died in 1924, legend has it neighbor James B. Duke sat with him on the wall of the graveyard and told him his vision for the University. Duke wanted to expand the campus, which at that time was was limited to today's East Campus.
The original expansion site-just north of East-would have been pricey, said Associate University Archivist Tom Harkins. Land speculators had been snatching up property there in anticipation of the University's growth. Instead, Duke sought the Rigsbee estate for additional land.
When Rigsbee's heirs sold the property to Duke for $1,000 in 1925, West Campus was born. There was, however, one important condition-the quarter-acre family cemetery had to be preserved.
"The Rigsbee family shall have the right of ingress, egress and regress over such part of said land as may be reasonably necessary for burying their dead and for maintaining, repairing and otherwise providing for the up-keep of side burying ground," the deed reads.
To this day, the Rigsbees still visit the burial sites of their ancestors. Several of them have card access to the Blue Zone, said 78-year-old Jackie Smith, great-granddaughter of the cemetery's namesake.
Family members mow the lawn periodically, and they've even started a family fund to pay for maintaining the property.
"You just feel like you're absorbing a little history," Smith said. "We're happy with it just the way it is, as long as it doesn't bother Duke and Duke doesn't bother it."
Some, however, say that the graveyard does bother Duke. Sophomore Amaris Whitaker recalled reading in Carpe Noctem, Duke's humor magazine, that the graveyard's ghosts haunt Duke's unsuccessful football team.
For some, the graveyard is simply a quaint spot on campus on which time seems to have little effect.
For others, including Whitaker, it's spooky.
"I just hope they aren't building over it, cause it'd be kind of creepy to be walking over dead bodies," she said.
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