Hollywood Cemetery (Richmond, Virginia)

The cemetery is in the Oregon Hill neighborhood of Richmond.{{sfn|Stoddard|Thomas|2014|p=14}} It is 135 acres in size and overlooks the James River.{{sfn|Stoddard|Thomas|2014|p=15}} It is one of the most visited cemeteries in Virginia.{{cite web |title=About Hollywood Cemetery |url=https://www.hollywoodcemetery.org/about/about-hollywood-cemetery |website=www.hollywoodcemetery.org |publisher=Hollywood Cemetery |access-date=17 November 2023}}

Hollywood Cemetery is the only cemetery besides Arlington National Cemetery that contains the burials of two U.S. Presidents. Although the United First Parish Church in Quincy, Massachusetts, contains the burial of two U.S. Presidents, John Adams and John Quincy Adams, in a crypt below the church.{{cite web |last1=Snell |first1=Charles W. |title=National Register of Historic Places Inventory - Nomination Form |url=https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/NHLS/70000734_text |website=npgallery.nps.gov |publisher=United States National Park Service |access-date=22 June 2024}}

President James Monroe was originally interred in Marble Cemetery in New York City when he died in 1831.{{sfn|Smith|2020|p=160}} Virginia petitioned to have his remains reinterred to Hollywood Cemetery. The Gothic Revival James Monroe Tomb monument designed by Albert Lybrock resembles a bird cage surrounding a simple granite sarcophagus.{{sfn|Stoddard|Thomas|2014|p=17}} It was built in the Presidents Circle section of the cemetery{{sfn|Stoddard|Thomas|2014|p=18}} and dedicated by Virginia governor Henry A. Wise on July 5, 1858. The monument was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1971.{{sfn|Stoddard|Thomas|2014|p=17}}

President John Tyler was buried in the Presidents Circle section of the cemetery in 1862 and a monument was dedicated by Congress in 1915. His death was not recognized in Washington, D.C., due to his allegiance to the confederacy. His burial ceremony was escorted by Jefferson Davis{{sfn|Stoddard|Thomas|2014|pp=19-20}} and address given by Armistead C. Gordon.{{cite book |last1=Gordon |first1=Armistead C. |title=Monument to John Tyler Address Delivered in Hollywood Cemetery, at Richmond, Va., on October 12, 1915 at the Dedication of the Monument Erected by the Government to John Tyler, Tenth President of the United States |date=1916 |publisher=Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |page=4 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xI7jK8S4GD8C |access-date=16 November 2023}}

Confederate president Jefferson Davis died in 1889. He was initially interred in Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans, and reinterred to Hollywood Cemetery in 1893.{{sfn|Stoddard|Thomas|2014|p=24}} A life-size statue made of bronze sculpted by George Julian Zolnay was added near his grave.{{cite book |last1=Carmichael |first1=Sherman |title=Mysterious Virginia |date=2022 |publisher=The History Press |location=Charleston, South Carolina |isbn=978-1-4671-5312-6 |pages=98–99 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SaiGEAAAQBAJ |access-date=17 November 2023}}

File:Richmond Virginia Hollywood cemetery - the pyramid to "Our Confederate Dead" - panoramio.jpg

In 1869, a {{convert|90|ft|m|adj=on}} high granite pyramid designed by Charles H. Dimmock was built as a memorial to the more than 11,000 enlisted men of the Confederate Army buried in the cemetery.{{cite book |title=Registry of the Confederate Dead, Interred in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, VA. |date=1869 |publisher=Gary, Clemmitt & Jones |location=Richmond |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UOIrAQAAMAAJ |access-date=15 November 2023}} The monument is made of roughly cut James River granite blocks.{{cite book |last1=McDowell |first1=Peggy |last2=Meyer |first2=Richard E. |title=The Revival Styles in American Memorial Art |date=1994 |publisher=Bowling Green State University Popular Press |location=Bowling Green, Ohio |isbn=0-87972-633-4 |page=144 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B0lWLIpVwvEC |access-date=17 November 2023}} The monument is inscribed with text in Latin that translates to, "In eternal memory of those who stood for God and Country." It was a project supported by the Hollywood Ladies' Memorial Association, a group of Southern women dedicated to honoring and caring for the burial sites of fallen Confederate soldiers.{{cite book |last1=Janney |first1=Caroline E. |title=Burying the Dead But Not the Past - Ladies' Memorial Associations & the Lost Cause |date=2008 |publisher=The University of North Carolina Press |isbn=978-0-8078-3176-2 |page=133 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=P4AOGGLcfy8C |access-date=17 November 2023}} The pyramid became a symbol of the Hollywood Memorial Association, appearing on its stationery as well as on the front of a pamphlet of buried soldiers, the Register of the Confederate Dead.{{Citation|last=Hollywood Cemetery|title=Confederate Memorial Pyramid (Hollywood Cemetery)|date=2015-04-29|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih2q-n0Pq3U |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211222/ih2q-n0Pq3U |archive-date=2021-12-22 |url-status=live|access-date=2018-10-15}}{{cbignore}}

William Byrd III, a wealthy planter, politician and military officer, was facing financial problems and divided his estate in Richmond known as the Belvidere into several plots 100-acres in size for sale. The Harvie family bought several of these lots which became known as "Harvie's Woods."{{sfn|Stoddard|Thomas|2014|p=15}}

In 1847, Joshua J. Fry and William H. Haxall, visited Mount Auburn Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts. They were impressed with Mount Auburn and proposed the creation of a similar rural cemetery in Richmond.{{cite web |title=William H. Haxall |url=https://www.hollywoodcemetery.org/william-h-haxall |website=www.hollywoodcemetery.org |publisher=Hollywood Cemetery |access-date=17 November 2023}} It was through their efforts and the subsequent cooperation of local citizens that Hollywood Cemetery was created.{{sfn|Stoddard|Thomas|2014|p=16}}

Fry, Haxall, and 40 other prominent Richmond citizens{{cite book |last1=Picone |first1=Louis L. |title=The President is Dead! The Extraordinary Stories of Presidential Deaths, Final Days, Burials and Beyond |date=2016 |publisher=Skyhorse Publishing |location=New York |isbn=978-1-5107-0376-6 |pages=88–89 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=s4LPDwAAQBAJ |access-date=17 November 2023}} purchased 42 acres from Lewis E. Harvie on June 3, 1847, for $4,075 to establish the cemetery. The founders hired John Notman, who was the landscape architect for Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, to design the cemetery in the rural garden style.{{cite book |last1=Birnbaum |first1=Charles A. |last2=Fix |first2=Julie K. |title=Pioneers of American Landscape II - An Annotated Bibliography |date=1995 |publisher=U.S. Department of the Interior |location=Washington, D.C. |isbn=0-16-048060-4 |pages=109–112 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iwFrlWNr6QkC |access-date=8 November 2023}} It was originally planned to be named Mount Vernon Cemetery,{{cite book |last1=Cothran |first1=James R. |last2=Danylchak |first2=Erica |title=Grave Landscapes - The Nineteenth Century Rural Cemetery Movement |date=2018 |publisher=University of South Carolina Press |isbn=978-1-61117-799-2 |access-date=17 November 2023 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rbM_DwAAQBAJ}} however Notman proposed the name Hollywood due to the abundance of holly trees on the property.{{sfn|Stoddard|Thomas|2014|p=11}} Oliver P. Baldwin{{cite web|url=http://www.genealogy.com/forum/surnames/topics/baldwin/6761/|title=Re: Oliver Perry Baldwin, Publ |website=www.genealogy.com}} delivered the dedication address in 1849.Alfred L. Brophy, [http://blurblawg.typepad.com/files/road-to-gettysburg-address.pdf "The Road to the Gettysburg Address," Florida State University Law Review 43 (2016):831-905.]

Hollywood Cemetery became so popular, that by the mid-1850s, the city of Richmond implemented an omnibus to transport visitors there every afternoon. A streetcar line was added in the 1860s.

At the outbreak of the American Civil War, the cemetery directors set aside two acres for confederate soldier burials which became known as the Soldiers' Section. Richmond citizens became outraged when they learned that soldiers that died in local hospitals were buried in potter's fields. In response to the outrage, the city increased the number of burials of dead soldiers at Hollywood and established Oakwood Cemetery across town for additional burials.{{sfn|Smith|2020|pp=161-162}}

The initial two acres assigned for soldier burials became full by July 1862 and the cemetery purchased additional land funded by the confederate government. By April 1865, the cemetery contained more than 11,000 confederate soldiers, which accounted for more than half of the total burials in the cemetery.{{sfn|Smith|2020|p=162}} After the war, the Ladies' Memorial Association worked to reinter 2,935 confederate soldiers from Gettysburg to Hollywood Cemetery. Confederate Civil War veterans continued to be buried in the cemetery into the 1900s.

The cemetery claims to contain the burial of 18,000 confederate soldiers, however researchers believe the number is actually several thousand lower. It is the largest single burial location of confederate soldiers.{{sfn|Smith|2020|p=151}} It contains the burials of 25 Confederate Army officers including J.E.B. Stuart, Fitzhugh Lee and George Pickett.{{sfn|Stoddard|Thomas|2014|pp=28-31}}

At George Pickett's request, he was buried among his men in his native Richmond when he died in 1875. LaSalle “Sallie” Corbell Pickett hoped she could be buried there too. Women were not allowed to be buried in the soldiers’ section of Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery at the time of Mrs. Pickett’s death in 1931. In 1998, for the first time a woman's remains have ever been allowed in this area, Mrs. Pickett was reburied in the Gettysburg soldiers’ section of Hollywood Cemetery by her husband. “Mrs. Pickettt died in the early 1930s, and had wanted to be buried with her husband in the Hollywood Cemetery.  But the Hollywood Ladies Memorial Society, which then controlled the Gettysburg Hill portion of the cemetery, would not allow it.” Richmond Discovery tour guide Jim DuPriest said.” So, Mrs. Pickett was buried in Abbey Mausoleum [which was] nearby, besides, and adjacent to Arlington National Cemetery in Northern Virginia.” … “Near the end of the ceremony, the families sprinkled soil from Mrs. Pickett’s home in Chuckatuck, Nansemond County, Virginia.”{{Cite web |title=The Tuscaloosa News - Google News Archive Search |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=eEogAAAAIBAJ&sjid=F6YEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4345,4272739 |access-date=2024-05-25 |website=news.google.com}}

The cemetery is unofficially considered the Confederate National Cemetery.{{sfn|Stoddard|Thomas|2014|p=11}}

{{Main|Confederate Memorial Day}}

On May 31, 1866, Hollywood Cemetery held its first Confederate Memorial Day celebration, and over 20,000 people were in attendance.{{sfn|Smith|2020|p=168}} The celebrations "became imbued with cultural and religious symbolism that underscored the gravity of what it meant to be a southerner."{{Cite journal|last=Kinney|first=Martha|date=1998|title=If Vanquished I Am Still Victorious: Religious and Cultural Symbolism in Virginia's Confederate Memorial Day Celebrations, 1866–1930|journal=The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography|volume=106|pages=237–266}}

The second Confederate Memorial Day celebration in 1867 at Hollywood Cemetery differed greatly from the one the year before. There were fewer marches and military bands and more women and children in attendance.{{cite book |last1=Blair |first1=William A. |title=Cities of the Dead: Contesting the Memory of the Civil War in the South, 1865-1914 |date=2004 |publisher=The University of North Carolina Press |location=Chapel Hill |isbn=0-8078-2896-3 |page=64 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mlDqCQAAQBAJ |access-date=17 November 2023}}

In 1876, the Gothic Revival stone structure designed to look like a ruined medieval tower was built at the entrance to house the chapel, office and receiving vault.{{sfn|Stoddard|Thomas|2014|p=13}} In 1915, the original entrance was closed and the present one was opened to better facilitate cars.{{cite web|last1=National Park Service|title=Hollywood Cemetery and James Monroe Tomb|url=http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/richmond/HollywoodCemetery.html|access-date=5 August 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170830152733/https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/richmond/HollywoodCemetery.html|archive-date=2017-08-30|url-status=dead}}

The cemetery expanded in 1877 with the purchase of an additional thirty-three acres along the river.{{sfn|Smith|2020|p=173}}

On November 12, 1969, Hollywood Cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

File:Interior of Palmer Chapel, Hollywood Cemetery.jpg

The Palmer Chapel Mausoleum was built 1992, adding 730 crypts for caskets and 160 cremation niches.{{Cite web|url=https://hollywoodgossipgalaxy.fun/hollywood-cemetery-a-timeless-tribute/|title=Our History-Hollywood Cemetery|website=hollywoodgossipgalaxy.fun|access-date=March 15, 2023}}

There are many local legends surrounding certain tombs and grave sites in the cemetery. One interesting grave of Florence Rees, a girl that died at 3 years old in 1862 of scarlet fever. The grave includes a cast-iron statue of a dog that stands watch over her. A local legend claims the statue was moved to the cemetery to prevent it from being melted down and used for bullets in the Civil War.{{cite web |title=Things to See |url=https://www.hollywoodcemetery.org/visit/things-to-see |website=www.hollywoodcemetery.org |publisher=Hollywood Cemetery |access-date=17 November 2023}} There is also the legend of Richmond Vampire which purports that William Wortham Pool, buried in the cemetery, was a vampire.{{Cite web |last=Kollatz Jr |first=Harry |date=2013-10-30 |title=W.W. Pool: Richmond's Reputed Nosferatu |url=https://richmondmagazine.com/api/content/2f9d65c2-1cc7-11e4-8907-22000a4f82a6/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230415234115/https://richmondmagazine.com/arts-entertainment/richmonds-reputed-nosferatu/ |archive-date=April 15, 2023 |access-date=2023-05-01 |website=richmondmagazine.com |language=en-us}}

In 2020, Hollywood Cemetery's board of directors quietly banned the display of Confederate flags in the cemetery due to its connection as a symbol of racism and the potential to provoke vandalism.{{cite news |last1=Springston |first1=Rex |title=No more Confederate flags at Hollywood Cemetery |url=https://www.virginiamercury.com/2022/07/12/no-more-confederate-flags-at-hollywood-cemetery/ |newspaper=Virginia Mercury |access-date=17 November 2023}}

A place rich in history, legend, and gothic landscape, Hollywood Cemetery is also frequented by many of the local students attending Virginia Commonwealth University.{{sfn|Stoddard|Thomas|2014|p=11}}

{{Main|List of burials at Hollywood Cemetery}}

File:Monroe Tomb 02.jpg|James Monroe grave after September 2016 renovation

File:John Tyler's grave.JPG|John Tyler grave

File:Jefferson Davis Grave.JPG|Jefferson Davis grave

File:HollywoodChapel.JPG|The chapel at the entrance of Hollywood Cemetery

File:Fitzhugh Lee's Grave.jpg|Fitzhugh Lee grave

File:Grave Jeb Stuart Flora Stuart.jpg|J.E.B. Stuart grave

File:Pickett's Grave.jpg|George Pickett grave

File:Hollywood-cast-iron-Newfoundland-and-French-style-cradle-grave.jpg|Cast-iron dog statue overlooking child's grave

File:SauerMausoleam.JPG|The Sauer family Mausoleum

File:WWPoolGrave.JPG|William Wortham Pool grave is associated with the Richmond Vampire urban legend

• List of burial places of presidents and vice presidents of the United States
• List of burial places of justices of the Supreme Court of the United States
• List of cemeteries in the United States

Citations

{{reflist}}

Sources

• {{cite book |last=Smith |first=Ryan K. |title= Death and Rebirth in a Southern City - Richmond's Historic Cemeteries|date=2020 |publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press |location=Baltimore, Maryland |isbn=978-1-4214-3927-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ftkGEAAAQBAJ}}
• {{cite book |last1=Stoddard |first1=Christine |last2=Thomas |first2=Misty |title=Richmond Cemeteries |date=2014 |publisher=Arcadia Publishing |location=Charleston, South Carolina |isbn=978-1-4671-2204-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H4xQBAAAQBAJ}}

• {{Cite book| publisher = History Press| isbn = 978-1-59629-268-0| last = Kollatz| first = Harry| title = True Richmond stories: historic tales from Virginia's capital| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_P5ftAEACAAJ |location = Charleston, SC| date = 2007}}
• {{Cite book| publisher = Virginia State Library| isbn = 978-0-88490-109-9| last = Mitchell| first = Mary H| title = Hollywood Cemetery: the history of a southern shrine| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sCQKFmE788gC | location = Richmond| date = 1985}}
• {{Cite book| publisher = Valentine Richmond History Center| isbn = 978-0-615-39192-2| last = Peters| first = John O| title = Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery| location = Richmond, Va.| date = 2010}}

{{Commons category|Hollywood Cemetery (Richmond, Virginia)}}

• {{Official website|http://www.hollywoodcemetery.org/}}
• [https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/va0568/ James Monroe Tomb, Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Independent City, VA]: 6 photos, 1 color transparency, 6 data pages, and 1 photo caption page at Historic American Buildings Survey
• {{GNIS|type=retired|1478778|Hollywood Cemetery}}

{{James Monroe}}

{{John Tyler}}

{{National Register of Historic Places in Virginia|state=collapsed}}

{{Authority control}}

Category:1849 establishments in Virginia

Category:Cemeteries established in the 1840s

Category:Cemeteries in Richmond, Virginia

Category:Cemeteries on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia

Category:Confederate States of America cemeteries

Category:Historic American Buildings Survey in Virginia

Category:National Register of Historic Places in Richmond, Virginia

Category:Rural cemeteries

Category:Tombs of presidents of the United States