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Bishop’s/St. Joseph’s Cemetery
Richmond’s earliest Roman Catholic residents — primarily Irish and French immigrants, with a small number of English — had buried in St. John’s churchyard and then in Shockoe Hill Cemetery. Only after 1834, with the opening of the city’s first Catholic parish, St. Peter’s Church on Grace Street, would the Diocese of Richmond’s leaders turn…
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Holy Cross Cemetery
Holy Cross Cemetery is located on Richmond’s north side at First Avenue and Daniel Street. It was founded in 1874 to serve St. Mary’s Catholic Church on East Marshall Street. Until the twentieth century, Holy Cross was known as St. Mary’s Cemetery. The first Roman Catholic cemetery in the city had been Bishop’s Cemetery, established…
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Disappointing preservation plans
What makes a good preservation plan for a historic cemetery? I can point to several examples: the report prepared by Michael Trinkley, Debi Hacker, and Sarah Fick in 1999 for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources and the City of Petersburg, titled “The African American Cemeteries of Petersburg, Virginia: Continuity and Change“; the preservation plan…
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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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Attack on Hollywood Cemetery
Grave vandalism has a long history. Richmond’s prized Hollywood Cemetery was even targeted during the Civil War, where in June 1863, “two china vases, containing bouquets, were deposited upon a grave, and stolen almost as soon as left,” and reporters heard “of plants being torn up by the roots, and every species of sacrilege perpetrated…
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East End’s letter to Governor Northam
If you’ve followed this web site’s news section, you’ve seen our consternation and disappointment regarding the Enrichmond Foundation’s management of Evergreen and East End Cemeteries. Enrichmond was ill-equipped to steward these two critical and fragile properties, but state agencies and politicians threw them in Enrichmond’s lap after 2016 without much of a plan. Since then,…
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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…
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Sarah Whiting’s new graveyard story
Sarah Whiting, executive director of the St. John’s Church Foundation, has announced that she is taking a new job at the Valentine Museum. That is great news for the Valentine but may mean a period of transition for the active programs Sarah has developed for St. John’s churchyard, site of the city of Richmond’s first…
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Storming the U. S. Capitol
Yesterday, on January 6, 2021, thousands of supporters of the president left a rally in DC protesting the election results to march on the United States Capitol. Hundreds breached security perimeters and broke into the capitol building where Congress was in session to certify the results of the electoral college vote. The president encouraged the…
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“Knowledge of this cannot be hidden” at the University of Richmond
The University of Richmond has recently installed interpretive signage for a burying ground for the enslaved that dates back to the West End campus’s previous usage as a plantation. It is located near the center of campus at the base of the steam plant. The university has also convened a Burial Ground Memorialization Committee, chaired…