Shockoe Hill Cemetery

About this property

The Shockoe Hill Cemetery is a historic cemetery located on Shockoe Hill in Richmond, Virginia. Shockoe Hill Cemetery, as it is presently called, was established by the City of Richmond in 1820, with the initial burial made in 1822. It was earlier known as the "New Burying Ground" or the "Shockoe Hill Burying Ground". This cemetery has long been recognized as the city of Richmond's first truly municipal cemetery for white persons —- that is, the first to be conceived, opened, and operated using detailed record-keeping, by the City of Richmond. (A portion of the cemetery surrounding St. John's Church, founded by the Anglican Church, was owned and operated by the City as a municipal burying ground.) Shockoe Hill Cemetery expanded in 1833, in 1850, and in 1871, when it reached its present size of 12.7 acres. Before 1820, the City had opened and operated two municipal cemeteries for free and enslaved Black Richmonders: the Shockoe Bottom African Burial Ground (historically called the Burial Ground for Negroes), in 1799, and in 1816 the "Burying Ground for Free People of Color and the Burying Ground for Negroes (enslaved)", now called the "Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground" (see below)). Among many notables interred at the Shockoe Hill Cemetery are Chief Justice John Marshall, Unionist spymaster Elizabeth Van Lew, Revolutionary War hero Peter Francisco, and Virginia Governor William H. Cabell. More than thirteen hundred servicemen are known to be buried here, including at least 22 Revolutionary War veterans; at least 400 War of 1812 veterans; and an estimated 900 Civil War soldiers, both veterans and wartime casualties. Members of the General Society of the War of 1812 have suggested that more veterans of that War are buried at Shockoe Hill, than at any other cemetery in the country. More than 500 Union Army prisoners of war had been buried in Shockoe Hill Cemetery's adjoining African Burying Ground during the Civil War, but the soldiers remains were moved in 1866 to Richmond National Cemetery, three miles to the east. Two markers, one placed by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1938, and the other by the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States in 2002, memorialize those POW burials. The Cemetery is open to burials of family members in existing family plots; the last such burial occurred in 2003. In July 2016 the City reclaimed title to several unused plots, on one of which there are plans to install a columbarium with niches to hold urns with cremated remains. Those plots (and eventually, niches) are available for purchase by the general public, marking the first sale of grave spaces in the Cemetery since about 1900. Shockoe Hill Cemetery is across Hospital Street from the Hebrew Cemetery of Richmond, a separate and privately owned cemetery.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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