Cemetery Lane in Ross is home to cemeteries that are Jewish, Catholic and Protestant, but few know that an old African-American cemetery also is there on an overgrown hillside hugging the road.

Two posts with a fallen chain between them are all that mark the rutted road that leads to the cemetery. Woods crowd the hillside graveyard which, on a recent afternoon, was bone quiet except for a distant train whistle.

"When I first saw it, I thought it was just the most pathetic cemetery I've ever seen," said Sandy Brown, a local historian who lives in Ross. She heard about the cemetery a couple of years ago at a West View Historical Society event, and she searched for the burial ground until she found it -- unkempt and seemingly forgotten.

When she checked on it again a year or so later, it still appeared to be abandoned.

But that could change soon.

Nigel Bentley, president of Rosemont, Evergreen and Mount Hope United Cemeteries, said he and his wife, Victoria, have plans for the little cemetery, which is a part of their cemeteries corporation.

"That [African-American] cemetery is in such a state of disrepair that we haven't had the money to do anything about it until this year," Mr. Bentley said, adding that workers are to begin deforesting the three-quarter-acre graveyard by the end of this month.

"We're going to go in and find and clean or replace the monuments. We'll also be identifying the unmarked graves and putting the names of those in unmarked graves on one large monument," Mr. Bentley said.

The Bentleys will use the cemetery's records to identify the unmarked graves. They are putting the records on a computer, Mr. Bentley said, and are about two months into the process, which they expect will take about a year.

He said he and his wife bought the cemeteries corporation in 1996 after it had suffered serious neglect, and they have been trying to get it back into shape since.

On a recent visit to the cemetery, Mrs. Brown pointed out depressions in the hillside, speculating that they might be sunken, unmarked graves.

Some of the graves are tangled in brambles and edged with moss.

One tombstone has tumbled off its pedestal. It reads: "Mary S. Scroggins 1850-1910 Mother." Myrtle grows wild right up against the woman's grave.

Several feet from Mary Scroggins' grave is that of Oliver L. Scroggins. His gravestone, which is a typical government stone issued for veterans, notes that Mr. Scroggins served as a private in the 6th PION Infantry during World War I and died in 1942.

The 6th PION refers to the 6th Pioneer Infantry Regiment, which consisted almost entirely of African-Americans and was largely involved with building roads, digging trenches and doing other construction projects.

Another veteran's headstone reads: "Walter Jones, Horseshoer Supply Co., 369th Inf."

While walking around the overgrown graveyard, Mrs. Brown noticed a toppled stone that was lying face down and was half-covered with brush. As she pulled away the brush, she found another. The vine-covered, moss-encrusted stone in the shape of a bed headboard, read: "Elizabeth Hill, Wife of William Hill." The birth date, sometime in the 1800s, was mostly worn away. The burial date was 1921.

Cindy Ulrich, a senior librarian in the Pennsylvania Department of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, said the department's cemetery book lists Rosemont, Evergreen and Mount Hope cemeteries as containing about 7,000 graves, 143 of which are for veterans.

Mrs. Ulrich noted that cemeteries sometimes were segregated in the past, with African-Americans buried in an area separate from whites. She said she lives close to the African-American graveyard but, like many others, wasn't aware of it because only a few of the headstones are readily visible.

But Fred Donatelli Jr., of Fred Donatelli and Son Cemetery Memorials on Cemetery Lane, knew about the graveyard. "It was a cemetery for veterans who were black," he said.

Ron Gancas, president, senior historian and chief executive officer of Soldiers & Sailors National Military Museum and Memorial in Oakland, said he only recently learned of the cemetery.

Mr. Gancas, who wrote "Fields Of Freedom," a book on a black Civil War regiment, said 1,000 black Civil War veterans were from southwestern Pennsylvania. "And one of the names was Scroggins," he said.

Among the old grave markers in the tiny cemetery lies a newer marker, made of metal, which reads: "Josephine Payne 1919-1995, Behm Funeral Home."

Chuck Behm, manager of the funeral home in Waynesburg, Greene County, remembered Mrs. Payne.

"She was a great lady. I really liked her. She was a member of the Episcopal Church here in Waynesburg," Mr. Behm said. "She was just a lovely person. Her husband, Laird, is buried there, too."