| Oakwood Cemetery | |
|---|---|
 View of a small portion of the Confederate Section | |
 | |
| Details | |
| Established | 1854 |
| Location | |
| Country | United States |
| Coordinates | 37°32′15″N77°23′55″W / 37.5376388°N 77.3985904°W |
| Owned by | City of Richmond |
| Size | 176 acres |
| No. of interments | >48,000 |
| Website | restoreoakwood.com |
| Find a Grave | Oakwood Cemetery |
Oakwood Cemetery is a large, city-owned burial ground in the East End of Richmond, Virginia. It holds over 48,000 graves, including many soldiers from the Civil War.
The City of Richmond purchased land in 1799 on the northern end of Shockoe Hill, for the main purpose of establishing a municipal burying ground. The Shockoe Hill Cemetery was established on those grounds in 1820. When space became scarce for new burials, the city responded by expanding the burying ground with the addition of 14 acres in 1850. Five of those acres were added to the walled Shockoe Hill Cemetery for white interments, and the remainder was added to the portion of the burying ground there located outside of the walls, reserved for the interment of people of colour and the enslaved (that portion of the burying ground was established in 1816). The city further responded by buying two tracts of land in what was then Henrico County in 1854, totaling 66 acres (27 ha). This land became Oakwood Cemetery. In early March 1855 the Committee on the Oakwood Cemetery and its Superintendent were ready to receive applications for interment of white persons who did not wish to buy a section, and for persons of color. [1] In May 1855 it was reported that portion of ground intended for colored burials was ready, and a number of interments had already been made in it. [2] However; the number of African American interments there was low, until after the closing of the Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground in June 1879. The Oakwood Cemetery Committee was a standing committee of the Richmond City Council. [3]
In 1861, Richmond was named the capital of the new Confederate States of America. After the Civil War broke out, the city's hospitals and clinics received a large number of critically wounded soldiers. The City Council agreed to provide interment for soldiers who died in Richmond or Henrico County, and in July 1862 offered to have Oakwood Cemetery opened for large scale burial of Confederate soldiers, and set aside a separate section of the grounds for this purpose.
Oakwood Cemetery was set as the final resting place of soldiers who died in treatment at Chimborazo Hospital, a massive facility on Church Hill. By the end of the war, the Confederate section of the cemetery covered about 7.5 acres (3.0 ha) and contained around 17,000 burials.
The United States Congress passed a resolution in 1866, a year after the war's end, providing for the creation of a system of national cemeteries for the interment of veterans and war dead. The resolution also called, controversially, for the removal of Union war dead and re-interment in the new national cemeteries. [4] The Richmond National Cemetery received the remains of 5,896 Union Soldiers from 09/01/1866 – 09/30/1867. Of that number, 1,432 were re-interments of soldiers originally interred in Oakwood Cemetery. [5]
On February 20, 1871 the Commission on Cemeteries reported to the Richmond City Council that Shockoe Hill Cemetery had been entirely filled up, leaving Oakwood the only City cemetery in which a person could purchase a section or part of one, or in which a person unable to buy the whole or part of a section could be decently buried. As Oakwood was limited in space, a recommendation was made that additional adjacent land be purchased for the interment of colored persons, (to be laid off into such sections as may be desired), and for the interment of those unable to buy a section. It was further mentioned that colored persons from Howard's Grove Hospital, a State Asylum, were actively being buried in Oakwood, which gave another reason for purchasing additional ground. Applications from various societies, as well as individuals, for sections were being received. The Committee therefore requested for an appropriation of two thousand five hundred dollar, for laying of drive and walk ways, and for making and laying off sections, and for other essential additions or improvements. [6] In June 1879 the burials of colored persons ceased completely at Shockoe Hill, and all new interments were then made at Oakwood Cemetery. Along with this shift in interments from one burial ground to the other came a new problem for Oakwood Cemetery, one that had been long prevalent in the colored burying ground on Shockoe Hill (Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground). The problem was grave robberies or body snatching. Graves were routinely robbed to supply medical cadavers for the medical colleges, especially the Medical College of Virginia (now VCU), and the University of Virginia. In 1878 it was discovered that Oakwood was being robbed of its dead. [7]
Oakwood Cemetery today covers about 176 acres (71 ha) of ground, and continues to be maintained by the City of Richmond and various charitable trusts.
Arlington National Cemetery is one of two cemeteries in the United States National Cemetery System that are maintained by the United States Army. Nearly 400,000 people are buried in its 639 acres in Arlington County, Virginia.
A potter's field, paupers' grave or common grave is a place for the burial of unknown, unclaimed or indigent people. "Potter's field" is of Biblical origin, referring to Akeldama, stated to have been purchased after Judas Iscariot's suicide by the chief priests of Jerusalem with the coins that had been paid to Judas for his identification of Jesus. The priests are stated to have acquired it for the burial of strangers, criminals, and the poor, the coins paid to Judas being considered blood money. Prior to Akeldama's use as a burial ground, it had been a site where potters collected high-quality, deeply red clay for the production of ceramics, thus the name potters' field.
Hollywood Cemetery is a historic rural cemetery located at 412 South Cherry Street in the Oregon Hill neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia. It was established in 1847 and designed by the landscape architect John Notman. It is 135-acres in size and overlooks the James River. It is the only cemetery other than Arlington National Cemetery that contains the burials of two United States Presidents, James Monroe and John Tyler.
The history of Richmond, Virginia, as a modern city, dates to the early 17th century, and is crucial to the development of the colony of Virginia, the American Revolutionary War, and the Civil War. After Reconstruction, Richmond's location at the falls of the James River helped it develop a diversified economy and become a land transportation hub.
Blandford Cemetery is a historic cemetery located in Petersburg, Virginia. Although in recent years it has attained some notoriety for its large collection of more than 30,000 Confederate graves, it contains remains of people of all classes and races as well as veterans of every American war. It holds the largest mass grave of 30,000 Confederates killed in the Siege of Petersburg (1864–65) and other battles during the American Civil War. Although only 3,700 names of the interred are known, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992, in part through the efforts of Charlotte Irving, first president of the Historic Blandford Cemetery Foundation. In addition to this cemetery's historic African American section discussed below, it is located adjacent to the People's Memorial Cemetery, a historic African-American cemetery, and small cemeteries containing additional dead from the lengthy Siege of Petersburg and Battle of the Crater in 1864.
Shockoe Hill is one of several hills on which much of the oldest portion of the City of Richmond, Virginia, U.S., was built. It extends from the downtown area, including where the Virginia State Capitol complex sits, north almost a mile to a point where the hill falls off sharply to the winding path of Shockoe Creek. Interstate 95 now bisects the hill, separating the highly urbanized downtown portion from the more residential northern portion.
Salisbury National Cemetery is a United States National Cemetery located in the city of Salisbury, in Rowan County, North Carolina. It was established at the site of burials of Union soldiers who died during the American Civil War while held at a Confederate prisoner of war camp at the site.
Richmond National Cemetery is a United States National Cemetery three miles (4.8 km) east of Richmond in Henrico County, Virginia. Administered by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, it encompasses 9.7 acres (3.9 ha), and as of 2021 had more than 11,000 interments. It is closed to new interments. Richmond National Cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.
Shockoe Bottom historically known as Shockoe Valley, is an area in Richmond, Virginia, just east of downtown, along the James River. Located between Shockoe Hill and Church Hill, Shockoe Bottom contains much of the land included in Colonel William Mayo's 1737 plan of Richmond, making it one of the city's oldest neighborhoods.
Richmond, Virginia served as the capital of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War from May 8, 1861, hitherto the capital had been Montgomery, Alabama. Notwithstanding its political status, it was a vital source of weapons and supplies for the war effort, as well as the terminus of five railroads, and as such would have been defended by the Confederate States Army at all costs.
The Hebrew Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, also known as Hebrew Burying Ground, and previously the Jew's Burying Ground, dates from 1816. This Jewish cemetery, one of the oldest in the United States, was founded in 1816 as successor to the Franklin Street Burial Grounds of 1789. Among those interred here is Josephine Cohen Joel, who was well known in the early 20th century as the founder of Richmond Art Co. Within Hebrew Cemetery is a plot known as the Soldier's Section. It contains the graves of 30 Jewish Confederate soldiers who died in or near Richmond. It is one of only two Jewish military cemeteries outside of the State of Israel.
The Old City Cemetery is a historic cemetery in Lynchburg, Virginia. It is the oldest municipal (city-owned) cemetery still in use today in the state of Virginia, and one of the oldest such burial grounds in the United States. Since the 1990s it has been operated as a history park and arboretum, in addition to being an active cemetery.
The Shockoe Hill Cemetery is a historic cemetery located on Shockoe Hill in Richmond, Virginia.
The Contrabands and Freedmen Cemetery at 1001 S. Washington St. in Alexandria, Virginia was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 15, 2012. It was established in February 1864 by the Union military commander of the Alexandria District for use as a cemetery for the burial of African Americans who had escaped slavery, known as contrabands and freedmen. During early Reconstruction, it was operated by the Freedmen's Bureau. It was closed in late 1868, after Congress ended most operations of the Bureau. The last recorded burial was made in January 1869.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Richmond, Virginia, United States
The Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground was established by the city of Richmond, Virginia, for the interment of free people of color, and the enslaved. The heart of this now invisible burying ground is located at 1305 N 5th St.
The Shockoe Bottom African Burial Ground, or known historically as the "Burial Ground for Negroes", is the older of two municipal burial grounds established for the interment of free people of color and the enslaved in the city of Richmond, Virginia. It is located at 1554 E Broad St., across from the site of Lumpkin's Jail, in Shockoe Bottom. The area now known as Shockoe Bottom, was historically known as Shockoe Valley. Richmond's second African Burial Ground, called the "Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground" is the larger of the two burial grounds, and is located a mile and a half away at 1305 N 5th St, on Shockoe Hill.
The Shockoe Hill Burying Ground Historic District, located in the city of Richmond, Virginia, is a significant example of a municipal almshouse-public hospital-cemetery complex of the sort that arose in the period of the New Republic following disestablishment of the Anglican Church. The District illustrates changing social and racial relationships in Richmond through the New Republic, Antebellum, Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow/Lost Cause eras of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Shockoe Hill Burying Ground Historic District occupies 43 acres (17 ha) of land bounded to the south by E. Bates Street, to the north by the northern limit of the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority right-of-way at the southern margin of the Bacon's Quarter Branch valley, to the west by 2nd Street, and to the east by the historic edge of the City property at the former location of Shockoe Creek. The District encompasses most of a 28.5-acre (11.5 ha) tract acquired by the city of Richmond in 1799 to fulfill several municipal functions, along with later additions to this original tract.
The city of Richmond, Virginia has two African Burial Grounds, the "Shockoe Bottom African Burial Ground", and the "Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground". Additionally the city is home to several other important and historic African American cemeteries.
