Shockoe Hill Cemetery: A Richmond Landmark History

By Alyson L. Taylor-White

Established in 1822, Shockoe Hill Cemetery is the final resting place for many famous and infamous icons of Richmond. Most visited is the tomb of Chief Justice John Marshall, the longest-serving chief justice of the United States, who elevated the Supreme Court to equal standing with the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. Union spy Elizabeth Van Lew operated an extensive espionage ring during the Civil War, and though reviled in life by many who resented her activism, she rests prominently near her elite neighbors. The burial places of friends and foster family offer a glimpse into Edgar Allan Poe's personal story. Author Alyson Lindsey Taylor-White charts the history of the celebrated cemetery and brings to life the stories of those buried there.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Jul 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9781625857125

Alyson L. Taylor-White

Alyson Lindsey Taylor-White is an award-winning writer, historian and educator. As editor of the Virginia Review magazine for twenty-five years, she traveled the state of Virginia, exploring local history, culture and politics. Since 2006, she has been an adjunct lecturer at the University of Richmond, where she creates courses that help busy individuals learn more about their community and its historical context. She enjoys giving tours of landmarks in Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia.

Book preview

preserved.

INTRODUCTION

What dreames may come. When we have shuffl’d off this mortal coil.

Must give us pawse.

—William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1602

On a clear, sunny day not too long ago, a luxury motor coach loaded with enthusiastic tourists rounded the corner at 4th and Hospital Streets in Richmond, Virginia’s Jackson Ward district. They were in for what promised to be a special treat. A volunteer with Shockoe Hill Cemetery was scheduled to introduce them to some of Richmond’s formerly famous and infamous characters. Suddenly, as the coach rounded the corner at the south entrance to the grounds, the driver shouted, I’m not going up in there!

Try to imagine that I was facing the back of the bus, with a microphone in my hand, talking to those who were hopefully riveted by my every word. As an experienced historian and guide, don’t panic is usually at the top of my list of things to remember. Thinking the bus driver was balking at taking the sharp bend in the corner to navigate the huge modern vehicle into the ornate but narrow nineteenth-century iron gated entrance, I determined to remain calm. As I turned, there were two of Richmond Police Department’s finest, their guns drawn and their squad cars lit up like Christmas trees.

Shockoe Hill Cemetery has never been in what might be called a genteel part of town, but that day it was in a part of town that was apparently also dangerous. Imaginary headlines flashed through my mind with lightning speed: Bus load of innocent tourists caught in deadly crossfire, tour guide to blame.

This Virginia Historical Highway Marker helps visitors locate and understand the significance of this Virginia and National Landmark. Jeffry Burden.

This near-brush with disaster was averted by quickly turning the bus around and heading for other parts of town. Fortunately, Richmond is loaded with history, so we had plenty of places to see that day. However, that experience continued to haunt me. It should not be that difficult to visit such an important historic site.

Since then, dozens of friends, outof-town guests and students have been taken there to discover the wonders of Richmond’s oldest city-owned cemetery. Thankfully, none of those visits has been quite as eventful as that earlier one. All of them have been fun and informative.

Shockoe Hill Cemetery was begun in the early 1820s when the first partially city-owned burial ground at historic St. John’s Church was filled to capacity. You may have heard of St. John’s as the site in 1775 where Patrick Henry uttered his famous Give me liberty, or give me death! speech at the Second Virginia Convention.

When the Richmond Common Council looked around for a suitable alternative to St. John’s, it found potential acreage near what was called Bacon’s Branch, across the street from the city almshouse (the current one was built in 1860), as well as Hebrew Cemetery, begun in 1816.¹ The council put some available parcels together and began to develop the land.

Members thought about the appearance as well as function of this new burial ground. City Surveyor Richard Young was commissioned to draft a plan of the site, which he did in 1824. Brick masons were engaged to build a wall around the cemetery, which was expanded several times over the years. It now includes 12.7 acres.

It is estimated that Shockoe Hill Cemetery has about twenty-seven thousand stories to go with each of its inhabitants, so no one book can tell them all. This is a modest attempt to tell some of them and shed light on what research has shown that life was like in early Richmond. For almost two centuries, the famous and infamous, the social princes and economic paupers have all found their final rest at Shockoe Hill Cemetery.

Yankee spy Elizabeth Van Lew has a most distinctive tombstone in the form of a giant boulder courtesy of her Boston friends. Author’s photo.

Heroes from the Revolutionary War to Vietnam are occupants of Shockoe Hill, including Hercules of the Revolution, Peter Francisco. Jeffry Burden.

Prominent national figures like Chief Justice of the United States John Marshall are there. Other occupants had a controversial role in history, like Union spy Elizabeth Van Lew. Just about every person in Richmond whom Edgar Allan Poe knew and loved is there. If fate had been kinder, Poe himself would be there as well. It is also the final resting place for war heroes from the Revolution, like the Virginia Hercules Peter Francisco, and significant Civil War officers and enlisted men—and even some loyal Unionists like John Minor Botts. It is estimated that over one thousand brave soldiers representing conflicts from the Revolution to Vietnam are there.² And there are quite a few tantalizing surprises as well. If you visit, and I hope you will, you will discover for yourself that Shockoe Hill Cemetery is remarkable. It is the final resting place of some of the nation’s most amazing individuals.

Shockoe Hill Cemetery is in both the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places. It is also part of a statewide historic site driving tour.

This seemed like as good a time as any to write about this great place. So what, you wonder, makes this place in particular worth the effort? And why on earth would anyone want to write stories about a cemetery? Surely, this is where all the stories end. On the contrary, this is where many of the really good stories about Richmond, Virginia, truly begin.

Chapter 1

SO WHAT’S A SHOCKOE?

Richmond, Virginia, has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to history. We can walk where Richmonders of the past lived and worked. We might have nicer sidewalks and streets than they did, but for the most part, the past is easy for us to imagine through the preservation of a rich inventory of notable sites. Often these antebellum Richmonders were pivotal to our local, state and even national narrative. One person like this who comes to mind is the Great Chief Justice John Marshall. Another is the enigmatic and brilliant author Edgar Allan Poe.

In the nearly two centuries since its creation in 1822, Richmond’s historic Shockoe Hill Cemetery has expanded to include 12.7 landscaped acres. It is the resting place for some twenty-seven thousand inhabitants. Of those, approximately one thousand are soldiers, the veterans of wars spanning from the Revolution to Vietnam.³

In 1995, Shockoe Hill Cemetery was nominated and awarded a coveted listing in the Virginia Landmark as well as the National Register of Historic Places due to its age, aesthetic and natural beauty, as well as significant occupants.⁴ Despite the damage of time and environmental elements, it has an impressive collection of monuments and ornamental metalwork. Many retain their original aesthetic elegance and touching sentiments.

For nature lovers, many trees were planted in the nineteenth century that still create shade and protect this rural retreat in a busy urban setting. These include southern magnolia, American boxwood, Hollywood juniper, tulip poplar, wild black cherry, Virginia elm, pin oak, Kentucky coffee, pink rose, lilac, silver maple, eastern red cedar, locust, yew and crape myrtle. The Richmond Common Council originally ordered the planting of Virginia elms, willows, and other suitable trees and evergreens for the improvement of the grounds.⁵

Early Richmonders would still be able to recognize their city in the modern one. This is the oldest city neighborhood of Shockoe Bottom from Church Hill, with downtown in the background. Author’s photo.

Shockoe Hill Cemetery was Richmond’s first cemetery that was created specifically for that purpose by the city. It is one of several that Richmond still owns.⁶

SHOCKOE HILL, VALLEY AND CREEK

The source of the name Shockoe has inspired a lot of discussion. It is easy to see where the hill part in the name Shockoe Hill Cemetery originated. Like ancient Rome, Richmond has many distinctive hills. Two of the earliest inhabited summits are Church Hill (formerly Indian Hill as well as Richmond Hill) and Shockoe Hill. But where did a name like Shockoe come from? Well, where there are hills, there are often valleys. In this case, the valley, or bottom, has a creek associated with it, also named Shockoe. Shockoe Creek is channeled to the James River underneath the modern-day city streets.

In the 1730s, William Byrd II spelled the word Shaccos. He owned much of the land that is now in the city, and he named and laid out the town with William Mayo in 1737. According to local legend, it reminded him of Richmond on the Thames in England where he had gone to school. He wrote on September 19, 1735:

When we got home we laid the foundation of two large cities, one at Shacco’s, to be called Richmond, and the other at the falls of Appomattox river, to be named Petersburg. These Major Mayo offered to lay out into lots without fee or reward. The truth of it is, these two places being the uppermost landing of James and Appomattox rivers, are naturally intended for marts where the traffic of the outer inhabitants must centre. Thus we did not build castles only, but also cities in the air.

Various sources have suggested that perhaps Shockoe is an ancient Algonquian word for rock in the water or rocky water. If it is, that is an apt description of the James River’s seven miles of falls and dramatic rapids that run through the city.

The James River was pivotal to the success of Richmond as a commercial port. Transportation by water was essential to getting crucial commodities to market as well as from the source. Rivers were the interstate highways of earlier days. The capital of Virginia since 1779, by the 1820s, Richmond enjoyed a healthy trade in agricultural as well as industrial enterprises. Products included tobacco, grains, cotton and iron goods, among others. It was also a significant slave trade market, second only in the nation to New Orleans.⁷

Richmond on the James River in Virginia was named by William Byrd II for Richmond on the Thames in England. Author’s photo.

Shockoe Hill Cemetery is located in the old Jackson Ward district of the city. The name of this neighborhood is thought to have originated in the 1830s when there was a place in the 100 block of nearby Leigh Street called Jackson Garden owned by a man named Joseph Jackson. Richmond featured several pleasure gardens during that period. They were places to meet and mingle and for sweethearts to socialize. They featured landscaped pathways, places to rest and live music. This part of town attracted an eclectic mix of free blacks, German, Irish and Italian immigrants who built attractive and well-maintained homes, some that are today being lovingly restored. After 1870, when the city divided into political subdivisions, this ward was gerrymandered from those already existing in order to concentrate the newly enfranchised black vote. The earlier wards that preceded it were named for prominent Virginians like Jefferson, Madison, Clay and Monroe.

In the 1820s when the cemetery began, Richmond’s population numbered about half white and half black. This included a growing immigrant population. Quakers, Catholics, Jews and other religious sects found Virginia congenial because of the social tolerance that existed there in general. Virginia became significantly more attractive after the passage on January 16, 1786, of the Statute for Religious Freedom. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison crafted this amazing document. Its very existence created an environment where new citizens could enjoy religious practices not available to them in their native countries. As a result, they were free from constraints that required pledging allegiance to the formerly state-supported religion, as had been the case under British rule. In addition to those of many different religious faiths, a rich mix of immigrants included those from the countries of England, France, Germany, Italy, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Diverse languages and exotic accents mixed and mingled in commercial and civic activities on Richmond’s dusty streets.

The city’s oldest neighborhood of Shockoe Bottom featured a rich