Richmond Cemeteries

Exploring Richmond Virginia’s Historic Burial Grounds

Author: RyanSmith

  • The Future of Shockoe Bottom

    The history-laden Shockoe Bottom area of Richmond has been subject to a lot of development, proposals, and visions over the years. One of the most constructive voices in the process, the Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project of the Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality, has put together a symposium on the subject, to be…

  • Return of the ancestral remains

    In 1994, construction workers at Virginia Commonwealth University’s medical college uncovered a shameful episode from the past when they discovered a nineteenth-century well filled with human remains. At least 44 bodies — almost all of African ancestry — had apparently been thrown into the well following their use as anatomical or surgical specimens by the…

  • RIP, Alyson

    Alyson L. Taylor-White passed away on June 15, 2019. This is a hard loss, and the community will miss her dearly. I’ll remember Alyson for many things. I first met her in 2015 when she signed a contract with The History Press to publish Shockoe Hill Cemetery: A Richmond Landmark History, which she would release…

  • Woodland in the spotlight

    Woodland Cemetery is garnering renewed attention as the city of Richmond prepares to rename one of its main thoroughfares Arthur Ashe Boulevard. A public celebration is set for June 22, 2019, and all the attention on Ashe has stirred interest and brought more visitors to his resting place in Woodland. Ownership of the private cemetery…

  • Disappearing the enslaved

    How do tens of thousands of people disappear? Authorities in the city of Richmond have honed this process. Today, the second African Burial Ground, also known as the Potters field, is again being edged out. The old graveyard began at the northeastern corner of Fifth and Hospital Streets in 1816, and it received the bodies…

  • East End goes the way things go

    Today I attended the court hearing which ruled on the Enrichmond Foundation‘s request to acquire East End Cemetery. It was a depressing spectacle. We got here because the directors of the East End Burial Association all died out, and its corporation was dissolved by the state, leaving its assets (the 16-acre historic cemetery) in legal…

  • New website from Friends of East End

    The Friends of East End Cemetery have outdone themselves with their recent unveiling of a gorgeous and information-rich website. Jolene Smith worked hard on it as well. It is by far our best public resource on the cemetery to date. I am sure I will be using it again and again with our students. Go…

  • The penitentiary burials

    Local archaeologist Ellen Chapman recently completed a useful dissertation at the College of William and Mary titled “Buried Beneath the River City: Investigating an Archaeological Landscape and its Community Value in Richmond, Virginia.” In it, she detailed the archaeological recovery of a number of burials at the state penitentiary grounds. The penitentiary was built in 1800…

  • Emek Sholom

    On November 11, 2018, organizers at Emek Sholom Holocaust Cemetery in Forest Lawn held their annual commemoration, this year marking the 80th anniversary of Germany’s Kristallnacht. Emek Sholom translates as “valley of peace,” and the memorial was unveiled in 1955 by relatives of those who perished during the Holocaust. It is among the earliest such memorials…

  • Ground penetrating radar at St. John’s churchyard

    Many folks in the preservation community are talking about the possibilities presented by ground penetrating radar, a relatively new technology in which pulses or waves are manipulated by a computer to reveal belowground shapes or features. This week, the St. John’s Church Foundation brought in Brian Whiting, a geologist on the faculty of Seattle University,…