Shockoe Hill Cemetery in Richmond (Photo by Jay Paul)
It looks like the work of a vengeful spirit.
The iron fence is wrenched apart. Gravestones are cracked and shattered. One enormous monument has been shoved partially off its base.
In 2016, storm winds toppled an ancient tree in Richmond's Shockoe Hill Cemetery, leaving a stump more than six-and-a-half feet across. With an estimated cost of $20,000, the work of removing the stump, putting the stones back in place and repairing them has been left undone.
Jeffry Burden and Clayton Shepherd regard the wreckage with dismay — but also hope that things will soon be set to rights. As the immediate past president and current president of the Friends of Shockoe Hill Cemetery, they’re charged with tending this 13-acre patch of earth.
“We’re stewards of this place,” Shepherd says.
Founded in 1822, it is the oldest public burial ground in the city. The cemetery may hold the remains of as many as 30,000 people, although less than a quarter of the graves are marked. Chief Justice John Marshall lies in repose here (and for years before his death, walked here every day to visit his beloved wife Polly’s grave). Other residents include Elizabeth Van Lew, an abolitionist who aided the Union by leading Richmond’s underground spy network during the Civil War; Edgar Allan Poe’s adoptive parents; and artist and activist Nora Houston.
The problem is, hardly anyone comes to visit them.
Clayton Shepherd, president of Friends of Shockoe Hill Cemetery (Photo by Jay Paul)
“We are a bit of an unknown,” Shepherd says. People who have lived in Richmond their entire lives have never been to the cemetery, he says. “They see it, but they don’t know how to get there.”
You can easily glimpse Shockoe Hill from I-64 where it merges with I-95 just north of downtown. (It’s the one surrounded by a brick wall; Hebrew Cemetery, founded about a decade earlier, is on the hill across Hospital Street.) But its location — hemmed by two highways and adjoining the public housing community of Gilpin Court — is seldom visited.
Birds sing in the towering poplars, over the roar of traffic and the hoot of an approaching train. A stray cat slides behind a stone. A tan-and-white terrier reclines on a flat grave marker, still as a sphinx, then trots off as Burden and Shepherd approach.
Burden is a self-described “cemetery guy” who found himself irresistibly drawn to Shockoe Hill two decades ago. He has photographed every stone and spent years seeking to identify Union prisoners of war who died in Richmond as unknowns. His efforts have allowed two families to place stones to honor their long-lost ancestors. Burden is also part of an effort to memorialize an African-American burial ground at the corner of Fifth and Hospital streets, now home to a derelict gas station.
Jeffry Burden, immediate past president of the Friends of Shockoe Hill Cemetery (Photo by Jay Paul)
Shepherd’s personal mission is marking as many Shockoe Hill veterans’ graves as possible. A retired chief petty officer in the Coast Guard Reserve with an interest in historic preservation, he started the “Adopt a Soldier” program in 2014. Now, more than 100 military graves — of Revolutionary War, War of 1812 and Civil War soldiers — have been marked.
Shepherd identified one Confederate soldier who had been murdered (or “bushwhacked,” in the newspaper parlance of the time) in Richmond. When he posted his findings on a genealogical research website, a descendant in Bristol, Tennessee, told him the family never knew what had happened to their ancestor. “That’s why we do this,” Shepherd says, to help the living remember their dead.
Shockoe Hill is owned by the city of Richmond, which carries out basic maintenance but has little money for things like gravesite restoration or tree work. The Friends have assumed the responsibility of raising funds for new grave markers — most recently, for Dr. James Drew McCaw, a hero of the Richmond Theater Fire, and the Reverend Henry Keeling, a founder of the University of Richmond. The group also organizes tours and defends the cemetery against its enemies: time, neglect and, recently, vandalism.
In June, several Confederate Crosses of Honor, other markers and plaques disappeared from the cemetery. After the Friends posted surveillance photos and asked the public for help, a man named Justin Randolph Kile was arrested in connection with the thefts on July 23. As CBS 6 has reported, markers from Shockoe Hill and four other Virginia cemeteries have been discovered at Lakeview Cemetery in Blackstone.
Shockoe Hill is about to become a working cemetery once more. Recently, the city has reclaimed several unused plots with the intention of building a small columbarium, a cylindrical structure with 72 niches for cremated remains. “You could literally be buried within 100 yards of Chief Justice John Marshall for under $2,000,” Shepherd says. The city is obligated to use the proceeds to spruce up the cemetery.
Within the next decade, its surroundings may change as well. A redevelopment of Gilpin Court as a mixed-use, mixed-income community is planned, although largely unfunded. The vacant lots surrounding the cemetery have been purchased by developers, Burden says.
Once Shockoe Hill Cemetery again becomes a functional, well-maintained green space, Burden says, “it becomes part of the historical landscape, more than it is now. We’ve got to hold the line in the meantime.”
For information on upcoming tours and events, including an Oct. 8 living-history interpretation of Van Lew in honor of her 200th birthday, visit the Friends of Shockoe Hill Cemetery Facebook page or the group’s website.
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