Tag: Hollywood Cemetery (Richmond VA)

Wikipedia says: Hollywood Cemetery is a large, sprawling cemetery located next to Richmond, Virginia’s Oregon Hill neighborhood at 412 South Cherry Street. Characterized by rolling hills and winding paths overlooking the James River, it is the resting place of two United States Presidents, James Monroe and John Tyler, as well as the only Confederate States President, Jefferson Davis. It is also the resting place of 28 Confederate generals, more than any other cemetery in the country; these include George Pickett and J.E.B. Stuart .

The land that Hollywood Cemetery currently stands on was once part of William Byrd III’s estate. Later, it was owned by the Harvie family and was known as “Harvie’s Woods.” William H. Haxall was one of the original founders of Hollywood Cemetery. In the spring of 1847, two citizens of Richmond, Joshua J. Fry and William H. Haxall, while on a visit to Boston, visited Mount Auburn Cemetery, a beautiful cemetery near that city. They were impressed by the solemn grandeur of the place and resolved that they would, on their return to Richmond, propose the establishment of a rural cemetery near the city. It was through their original efforts and the subsequent cooperation of local citizens that Hollywood Cemetery was created. On June 3, 1847, Haxall, Fry, William Mitchell Jr., and Isaac Davenport Sr. purchased from Lewis E. Harvie, who sold under a deed of trust from Jacqueline B. Harvie for the sum of $4,075, a certain portion of the lots or parcels of land in the town of Sydney, in the County of Henrico, together with “the privileges and appurtenances to the belonging, which said portion is adjoining to Clarkes Spring and contains by survey forty-two acres, three roods, but of which one rood, known as Harvie’s rood, or graveyard, with free ingress and egress to the said graveyard is reserved.” This purchase was made with the design of establishing a rural cemetery. Hollywood Cemetery was designed as a garden cemetery, or park cemetery, which was the trend at the time borrowed from the French in an effort to provide more green space in urban areas.

In the late 1840s, William Haxall, William Mitchell Jr. and Joshua Fry hired John Notman (architect of Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia) to design the cemetery in the rural garden style. Its name, “Hollywood,” came from the holly trees dotting the hills of the property. Oliver P. Baldwin delivered the dedication address in 1849.

James Monroe was reinterred from New York City to the “President’s Circle” section of Hollywood cemetery on July 4, 1858, due to the efforts of Governor Henry A. Wise.

In 1869, a 90-foot (27 m) high granite pyramid designed by Charles H. Dimmock was built as a memorial to the more than 18,000 enlisted men of the Confederate Army buried in the cemetery. 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.