Tag: Oakwood Cemetery (Richmond VA)

Wikipedia says: Oakwood Cemetery is a large, city-owned burial ground in the East End of Richmond, Virginia.

The City of Richmond purchased land in 1799 for the main purpose of establishing a municipal burying ground. The Shockoe Hill Cemetery was established on those grounds in 1820. When space became scarce for new burials, the city responded by expanding the burying ground with the addition of 14 acres in 1850. Five of those acres were added to the walled Shockoe Hill Cemetery for white interments, and the remainder was added to the portion of the burying ground there located outside of the walls, reserved for the interment of people of colour and the enslaved (that portion of the burying ground was established in 1816). The city further responded by buying two tracts of land in what was then Henrico County in 1854, totaling 66 acres (27 ha). In early March of 1855 the Committee on the Oakwood Cemetery and its Superintendent were ready to receive applications for interment of white persons who did not wish to buy a section and for persons of color. In May of 1855 it was reported that portion of ground intended for colored burials was ready, and a number of interments had already been made in it. The Oakwood Cemetery Committee was a standing committee of the Richmond City Council.

In 1861, Richmond was named the capital of the new Confederate States of America. After the Civil War broke out, the city’s hospitals and clinics received a large number of critically wounded soldiers. The City Council agreed to provide interment for soldiers who died in Richmond or Henrico County, and in July 1862 offered to have Oakwood Cemetery opened for large scale burial of Confederate soldiers, and set aside a separate section of the grounds for this purpose.

Oakwood Cemetery was set as the final resting place of soldiers who died in treatment at Chimborazo Hospital, a massive facility on Church Hill. By the end of the war, the Confederate section of the cemetery covered about 7.5 acres (3.0 ha) and contained around 17,000 burials.