Randolph Cemetery | |
Location | Western terminus of Elmwood Ave., Columbia, South Carolina |
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Coordinates | 34°0′34″N81°3′15″W / 34.00944°N 81.05417°W |
Area | 4 acres (1.6 ha) |
Built | 1872 | , 1899
NRHP reference No. | 94001573 [1] |
Added to NRHP | January 20, 1995 |
Randolph Cemetery is a historic cemetery for African-Americans in Columbia, South Carolina. It was established in 1872 and expanded in 1899. It was named for Benjamin F. Randolph (1820–1868), who was reburied at the cemetery in 1871. Randolph was a militia leader protecting African Americans when he was assassinated. A memorial in his honor and for other African-American leaders killed was erected[ when? ]. [2] Gravemarkers include both manufactured and vernacular homemade varieties. The cemetery holds eight Reconstruction Era state legislators. [3] [4] It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995. [1]
Randolph Cemetery was established as the first cemetery for Columbia's African-American population (up until then, African-Americans has been buried in the local potter's field called Lower Cemetery between the river and the current Randolph Cemetery). [5] The cemetery initially consisted of three acres purchased from Elmwood Cemetery in 1872. [6] An additional acre was purchased in 1899. [3] Today it spans about six acres. But how those additional two acres were acquired is not clear. [7]
The cemetery fell into decline as the descendants of those interred and the owners of the remaining plots moved away, many as part of the Great Migration. The area became wilderness by the middle of the 20th century.
The city of Columbia began to clear it out with bulldozers as part of its urban renewal program in 1959, but the clearing was halted when Minnie Simons Williams, a local resident, drew the city's attention to the historical significance of the cemetery. [8] Williams, along with descendants of the founders of the cemetery, reestablished the Randolph Cemetery Association and were given (through a legal suit) stewardship of the cemetery. The association has organized donations and volunteers to restore and maintain the cemetery. [9]
The Congressional Cemetery, officially Washington Parish Burial Ground, is a historic and active cemetery located at 1801 E Street, SE, in Washington, D.C., on the west bank of the Anacostia River. It is the only American "cemetery of national memory" founded before the Civil War. Over 65,000 individuals are buried or memorialized at the cemetery, including many who helped form the nation and the city of Washington in the early 19th century.
Rock Creek Cemetery is an 86-acre (350,000 m2) cemetery with a natural and rolling landscape located at Rock Creek Church Road, NW, and Webster Street, NW, off Hawaii Avenue, NE, in the Petworth neighborhood of Washington, D.C., across the street from the historic Soldiers' Home and the Soldiers' Home Cemetery. It also is home to the InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington.
Thomas James Robertson was a United States senator from South Carolina. Born near Winnsboro, he completed preparatory studies and graduated from South Carolina College at Columbia in 1843. He engaged in planting and owned slaves. He was a member of the State constitutional convention in 1865.
David Wyatt Aiken was a slave owner, Confederate army officer during the American Civil War and a postbellum five-term United States Congressman from South Carolina.
Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit is one of Michigan's most important historic cemeteries. Located at 1200 Elmwood Street in Detroit's Eastside Historic Cemetery District, Elmwood is the oldest continuously operating, non-denominational cemetery in Michigan.
Benjamin Franklin Whittemore, also known as B. F. Whittemore, was a minister, politician, and publisher. After his theological studies, he was a minister and then during the Civil War, a chaplain for Massachusetts regiments. Stationed in South Carolina at the end of the war, he accepted a position of superintendent of education for the Freedmen's Bureau. He was a Republican U.S. Representative from South Carolina. He was censured in 1870 for selling appointments to the United States Naval Academy and other military academies. He spent his later years in Massachusetts, where he was a publisher.
Elmwood Cemetery is a 43-acre (17 ha) historic rural cemetery, located in what became the urban area of 4900 Truman Road at the corner of Van Brunt Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri. With an estimated 35,000—38,000 plots, the cemetery is owned, operated, and maintained by the non-profit organization Elmwood Cemetery Society.
The Eastside Historic Cemetery District is a historic district bounded by Elmwood Avenue, Mt. Elliott Avenue, Lafayette Street, and Waterloo Street in Detroit, Michigan. The district consists of three separate cemeteries: Mount Elliott Cemetery, Elmwood Cemetery, and the Lafayette Street Cemetery. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
Stuart Warren Cramer was an American engineer, inventor, and contractor, who gained prominence after designing and building near 150 cotton mills in the southern United States. He was the founder of Cramerton and became involved in the nascent air conditioning industry, as well as being a founding partner in Duke Power.
Benjamin Franklin Randolph was an American educator, spiritual advisor, newspaper editor who served as a South Carolina state senator during the Reconstruction Era. Randolph was selected to be one of the first African American Electors in the United States at the 1868 Republican National Convention for the Ulysses Grant Republican presidential ticket. Randolph also served as the chair of the state Republican Party Central Committee. He was a delegate to the 1868 South Carolina Constitutional Convention, where he played an important role in establishing the first universal public education system in the state, and in granting for the first time the right to vote to black men and non-property owning European-American men. On October 16, 1868, Randolph was assassinated by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Evergreen Cemetery is a historic cemetery in Jacksonville, Florida. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 8, 2011. It is located at 4535 North Main Street, in the city's Northside area.
Mulberry Chapel Methodist Church, also known as Mulberry Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church and Mulberry Chapel, is a historic Methodist church located near Pacolet, Cherokee County, South Carolina. It was built about 1880, and is a one-story, vernacular Gothic Revival style frame church building. It is one of only a few extant African-American churches in South Carolina dating from the first 25 years after the American Civil War. Also on the property is a cemetery with approximately 20 marked graves and an additional 20 or more unmarked ones. Headstones date from 1888 to the 1960s. The most prominent figure associated with the cemetery is Samuel Nuckles, a former slave who served in the 1868 Constitutional Convention and represented Union County in the South Carolina House of Representatives during Reconstruction, between 1868 and 1872.
Elmwood Cemetery is a historic rural cemetery located at Columbia, South Carolina. It was established in 1854, and expanded in 1921. The older section is heavily wooded and has a section devoted to Confederate dead.
Lucius Wimbush was a state legislator, businessman, and public official. After being freed from slavery, he became a state senator during the Reconstruction Era in South Carolina. Wimbush was elected from Chester County and was secretary of the Chester Union League. He is buried in Randolph Cemetery where eight other Reconstruction era legislators were also interred.
William Fabriel Myers was a lawyer and state senator in South Carolina. An African American, he was involved in politics during the Reconstruction Era. He served as a state senator from 1874 until 1878.
Robert John Palmer was a tailor and politician born into slavery in South Carolina. Palmer was a state representative from 1876 to 1878 and had a tailor shop opposite the post office on Main Street in Columbia, South Carolina.
William Beverly Nash was a barber, shoe shine, porter, waiter, and state senator in South Carolina. An African American, Nash was born enslaved in Virginia, Nash gained his freedom at the age of 43 with the passage of the 13th Amendment. After the Civil War he became a state legislator during the Reconstruction Era. He was instrumental in drafting South Carolina's Constitution of 1868, and held several committee positions in the state government over his career. He held his office for 21 years before resigning.
Samuel Benjamin Thompson was a lawyer, judicial official, and Reconstruction Era politician in South Carolina.
William Simons was a Reconstruction era politician in South Carolina. He was a member of the 48th and 49th South Carolina General Assembly from 1868 until 1872 and was one of the four representatives for Richland County. He was a Republican.
On the evening of October 20, 1870, Wade Perrin, a Republican Party member of the South Carolina House of Representatives, was assassinated by a group of white men affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan. The murder took place in present-day Joanna, South Carolina, in rural southeastern Laurens County. Perrin had been re-elected to a second term in the legislature the day before, but riots in and around Laurens County on the day of the election spurred violence towards at least a dozen Republican members-elect, most of them African Americans. After being caught by the men and being made to dance, sing, and pray, they ordered Perrin to run away, at which point he was shot dead. He was found lying in the street with his pockets turned inside out. Perrin was honored with a funeral service held in the House chambers on January 31, 1871, with the House and State Senate both present. A total of six men were ultimately charged for Perrin's murder, as well as the murders of several other black legislators under similar circumstances.