Hollywood Cemetery was created in 1847, after two Richmond entrepreneurs visited Boston’s Mount Auburn, a model for the rural cemetery movement. When the pair returned home, their resulting company soon commissioned Philadelphia architect John Notman to design grounds for a new cemetery on a hilly, wooded plot on the western edge of town overlooking the…

Oakwood Cemetery is located on the east end of Richmond, between Nine Mile Road and Stony Run Parkway. It was founded by the city in 1854, with the purchase of 60 rural acres overlooking Stony Run Creek. The land had previously been known as “Shore’s Farm,” and members of city council found the land “sufficiently…

Hebrew Cemetery opened in 1817, on Richmond’s north side at Hospital and 4th Streets, overlooking Bacon’s Quarter Branch. One year earlier, in February 1816, Richmond’s Congregation Beth Shalome had charged three of its members with appealing to city council “concerning the appropriation of some ground that was laid off for burying-grounds, for the different religious…

In 1815, a group of free African-Americans in Richmond created a “Burying Ground Society of the Free People of Color of the City of Richmond” to provide a better alternative to the “Burial Ground for Negroes” in Shockoe Bottom. It was the first such organization composed by African Americans in the state. The group included…

The “Burial Ground for Negroes,” as it was titled on a map of the city in 1809, was the first designated burial spot for the city’s enslaved and free residents of African ancestry. Its origins are not documented, but it came into use in relation to the whites-only burial ground around St. John’s church sometime…

The yard surrounding St. John’s church became Richmond’s first official burial ground when the church was constructed here in 1741. Richmond’s founder, William Byrd II, had donated the two highest lots in the city for its location “on the Hill called Indian Town” (now Church Hill). As a part of the colony’s Anglican establishment, St. John’s…

Welcome to the Richmond Cemeteries project, coordinated by Dr. Ryan K. Smith in the History Department at Virginia Commonwealth University. This project highlights central Virginia’s notable burying grounds and offers a portal for research and self-guided tours. The region’s dramatic history, from colonial settlements and slavery, to Revolution and Civil War, to postwar emancipation and industrialization, can be seen here.…