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New! From stonecarver J. Henry Brown
One of the great “Treasures from the Collections of the Library of Virginia” is the set of 12 order books from the J. Henry Brown Monuments company dating from 1899 through 1920. Brown established his Richmond shop in 1885, where he specialized in creating gravestones. His order books contain thousands of detailed entries, documenting markers…
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St. James Cemetery event, 11/30
This Fall 2023 semester, the Richmond Cemetery Collaboratory (recently renamed from the East End Cemetery Collaboratory) has engaged with St. James Cemetery in Varina just east of Richmond. The governing organization of the cemetery is the Star of Benevolence Society, which is connected to a historic lodge and schoolhouse on the property at St. James…
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RIP Representative McEachin
I was saddened to hear of the death of Congressman A. Donald McEachin on November 28. In my own most recent experience with Rep. McEachin, he was talking with the local African American descendant community about his co-sponsored African American Burial Grounds Preservation Program bill. Around that same time, he had issued a letter to…
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Battlefield Park Road Cemetery
Today new signage was unveiled at the Battlefield Park Road Cemetery in eastern Henrico County. This is not the nearby Fort Harrison National Cemetery, but a private family cemetery, listed in the “Henrico County Cemeteries” study as the Harris-Lawrence-Jackson Cemetery. It is located at 7921 Battlefield Park Road in Varina for those looking to visit.…
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VCU’s Apology
On September 16, 2022, Virginia Commonwealth University’s board of visitors approved a resolution apologizing for the 1968 heart transplant episode in which Bruce Tucker’s live heart was taken without his and his family’s consent at the Medical College of Virginia’s hospital. The resolution also acknowledges and regrets the earlier practice of targeting Black graves to…
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The Long Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe
In 1922, the admirers of Edgar Allan Poe in the Poe Foundation adopted the “Old Stone House” on Richmond’s Main Street to serve as a library and museum in tribute to the city’s famous son. The Poe Museum has since grown to be a beloved fixture and notable home to Poe memorabilia and events. This…
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Gravestone carver registry
Just offering out here the idea to create a registry/index of stonecarvers who worked in central Virginia in the 19th and 20th centuries, as that idea was just offered to me by Joanna Wilson Green at the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Hopefully we can follow up with another post with an announcement along those…
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Women Writers Buried in Virginia
There’s a new book on the area’s cemeteries to celebrate: Sharon Pajka’s Women Writers Buried in Virginia, published in November 2021. Sharon is a faculty member in the English Department at Gallaudet University and an exceptionally creative and kind colleague. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia and a graduate certificate from the…
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African American graveyards roundup
In the last few months, within the state of Virginia alone, I have heard from or about: Fluvanna County Historical Society‘s recovery efforts at two nineteenth-century burial grounds for African Americans: Oak Hill Cemetery in West Bottom, and Free Hill Cemetery in Columbia A neighborhood movement to protest a casino proposal adjoining historic black graves…
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Truman family burial ground
A site in eastern Henrico County, along Long Bridge Road, has yielded important new discoveries. After the Capital Region Land Conservancy purchased the 40-acre tract in 2020, it commissioned the William & Mary Center for Archaeological Research to assess the property. Archaeologists found projectile points dating to 3,000 BCE indicating an indigenous camp site. The…