Bunker Hill and the Families Who Built It

If you find yourself driving east out of Parrish, Florida, along Highway 62, you might notice a modest green sign pointing toward the Keen Cemetery, in Duette. Most folks pass it by without a thought. But if you turn down the sandy lane, past the orange groves and into the hush of pines, you’ll stumble upon one of Manatee County’s oldest pioneer settlements, Bunker Hill.

Bunker Hill was never a bustling town with storefronts and saloons. It was something quieter, sturdier: a patchwork of homesteads where families like the Keens, the Chanceys, and the Raulersons carved out a living from sandy soil. They built cabins, raised cattle, and planted groves. They were tied together not just by geography but by bloodlines, marriages, and the inevitability of sharing hard times as neighbors.

At the center of this world was the Keen family. Jacob Keen and his wife, Elizabeth Miley, were early homesteaders, and their land became the resting place for generations. According to "Keen Cemetery" by Pauline Chancey (1982), the oldest marked grave belongs to young Nelley R. Keen, who died in March of 1891. Just ten days later, another child, Mary Amanda Keen, was laid to rest. It is the kind of sorrow that defined pioneer life: families lived close to the land, but also close to loss.

If you wander the cemetery today, you will find plenty of unmarked plots. Time has a way of erasing names, but the community has never forgotten. Four times a year, on the first Saturday in January, April, July, and October, families gather for what they call a graveyard working. According to Chancey’s account, this tradition brings descendants back to pull weeds, trim grass, and set right the headstones that lean a little more each year. In its own way, it is a family reunion of the living and the dead.

The headstones themselves tell stories. There is one for Jack Keene, born in 1856 and died in 1905, whose name appears with that little “e” at the end, though he was of the same Keen clan. There are infants marked only as “stillborn son” or “infant daughter,” stark reminders of how fragile life once was. And then there are the veterans, like Perry Owen Keene, who enlisted in the Confederate Army at 17. His life story, preserved in Chancey’s booklet, details how he later returned to farm, serve as county commissioner, and raise six children. His years were stitched between war and the slow rebuilding of peace.

And then there is the mystery. The cemetery records mention an “Alabama woman,” buried without a stone, remembered only as a whisper. Another name, Patsy Driggers, appears without explanation. Who were they? What brought them here? Their stories, like so many others, are tucked away in the pine needles and the silence.

For all its history, Bunker Hill is not a place of grandeur. It is a place of grit and grace. Families here lived simply, worked hard, and leaned on each other. Today, the descendants still tend the graves, just as their great-grandparents tended the land. And in doing so, they keep Bunker Hill alive, not as a bustling town on the map, but as a living memory etched into the Florida soil.