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Pajka’s Souls Close to Edgar Allan Poe
Sharon Pajka, the prolific Richmond-region author and cemetery friend, releases a new book today. Titled The Souls Close to Edgar Allan Poe, it has an inviting cover photograph of the Allan grave markers in Shockoe Hill Cemetery. Sharon explains: “My book includes a collection of thirty-seven memorials, nineteen cemeteries and five states, plus Washington, D.C.…
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A moment to celebrate for Shockoe Hill
Hooray! This morning, the state review board and the board of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources at their quarterly meeting both unanimously approved our nomination of the “Shockoe Hill Burying Ground Historic District,” for listing on the Virginia landmarks register. This step moves the nomination forward to the National Park Service for listing on…
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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…
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Shockoe Cemetery’s stewards
It was a common story – a vandal recently ransacked Shockoe Hill Cemetery, among several others, and stole a number of items — gravestones, interpretive markers, and military insignia. The story took a turn, however, when the Friends of Shockoe Hill Cemetery noticed that the items were missing in mid-June 2018. The Friends reviewed their…
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Shockoe Hill Cemetery tour, 5/20
On Sunday, May 20, I will be leading a tour of Shockoe Hill Cemetery at 2:00pm, showcasing the many excellent student projects from this past Spring semester. We have new revelations on Nannie Caskie (the big angel monument) as well as many other stories in the cemetery. Join us there?
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Shockoe Hill Cemetery
Fun piece in the Richmond Times-Dispatch by Bill Lohmann this week on the recent activity at Shockoe Hill Cemetery and the work of its Friends group. He highlights the new Daniel Norton marker and its celebration. The Friends have two more activities upcoming: at 2:00pm on February 4, the group will celebrate the life and…
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Shockoe Hill Cemetery news
Shockoe Hill Cemetery and its friends will be active over the next several weeks. First, congratulations to Alyson L. Taylor-White, for the publication of her new book on the cemetery, entitled Shockoe Hill Cemetery: A Richmond Landmark History (History Press, 2017). Alyson has led tours at Shockoe Hill Cemetery for many years and brings its details to…
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New start/a little history part 3
To end the suspense, I now bring us up to 2017, with the remainder of the old site’s comments: On July 24, 2017, I celebrated Brian Palmer for hitting the big leagues on behalf of East End Cemetery: “Noteworthy editorial in the New York Times by Brian Palmer on East End/Evergreen, January 7, 2017. Great…
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New start/a little history part 2
Continuing my history of my historical website focusing on historical sites, for 2015: On March 10, 2015, I publicly stated that I was “Taking the plunge now – I have started writing an overall history of Richmond’s historic cemeteries. Hopefully will lead to upgrades throughout the site here. So far, I have rough drafts of…
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New start/a little history
Thanks to some startup funding from the VCU College of Humanities and Sciences, I was able to hire art/tech wizard Harry Herskowitz recently to help me redesign the original wp.vcu.edu/richmondcemeteries site, which I had migrated to richmondcemeteries.org. We have greatly improved the functionality of the site, rescaling it for different devices and introducing more map elements.…