Down a steep grassy hill and to your left, after you pass through the front gate of the Laurel Hill Cemetery in Weston, Mo., sits the "colored section." There is no sign that says as much. Just a few scattered markers, some no larger than a cement brick. Some have names hand-scribbled in crumbling concrete. Others are just marked "Negro child" or "Negro woman of Mrs. Catherine Harris."

Many have no stones or markers. Forgotten under unmarked patches of grass that lie in the shadows of contorted oaks and maples beneath a postcard view of the city.

Even as a young girl this part of the cemetery bothered Carolyn Larsen. She always wondered why there were so few stones there when at one time there were as many as 3,000 blacks living in Weston.

"I thought, 'Where did all these people go?'" Mrs. Larsen said while I visited with her at the Weston Historical Museum last week. "I said, 'I'm going to find out.'"

And she did. For 20 years. Mrs. Larsen dug through hundreds of years of court records, birth certificates, death notices and yellowed Weston Chronicle newspaper articles to try and put a name and a face to those forgotten people. She had enough material for a book.

"We, Too, Lived: A Genealogy of the African-Americans in a Midwest Cemetery 1850-1950" was a labor of love, Mrs. Larsen said. She was able to find and document more than 400 individuals in the colored section of the cemetery, many of them former slaves.

"What I wanted to do was not only give these people a name but give them a little bit of flesh so it was like today I feel like if I walked down the street and met these people I would know them," Mrs. Larsen said. "Now they live for me and that's what I want them to do for other people."

The book also features more than 85 pages of photos and stories of black life in Weston, most if it culled from the pages of the Weston Chronicle newspaper.

Mrs. Larsen's family owned the local newspaper for more than 100 years. She also served as the Weston Chronicle editor for the past eight years. The paper was a valuable resource in her efforts to recreate early black life in the town, Mrs. Larsen said.

"The Weston Chronicle was one of the few newspapers in Missouri that continuously reported on the African-American community," she said

In the book you'll read stories about Sawney Vaughn, a black community organizer and political leader in the early 1900s. You'll also learn about storyteller Lester "Soup" Anderson, Mack Bell's Weston Colored Coronet Band and the Mary Bethune schoolhouse for blacks, among other historical facts and people.

There's also newspaper articles about everyday black life like the community picnics, church gatherings and news reports like the time when John Guilford slashed at Mon Brown's throat.

Mrs. Larsen ultimately hopes the book will help people find their ancestors. She also wants to sell enough copies to purchase a sign for that section of the cemetery.

"It was a joy to do, but I'm glad it's finished," Mrs. Larsen said. "It's a part of Weston history that's never been written about and needed to be."

"We, Too, Lived: A Genealogy of the African-Americans in a Midwest Cemetery 1850-1950" can be purchased at the Weston Historical Museum on 601 Main St., in Weston, Mo., or on lulu.com. You also can call the museum at (816) 386-5799 for more information on the book.

Alonzo Weston can be reached

at alonzow@npgco.com