Walking Tour Held at Mt. Hope Cemetery
Our Second Annual Walking Tour was held Sat., November 7, 2009 at Mt. Hope Cemetery. Ruth Little, PhD, conducted the tour. Little, a historian, completed the work to nominate Mt. Hope to the National Register of Historic Places, which was official in January 2009.
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Remembrance, a play by Ian Finley
"Our stories are in the stones... buried but not forgotten."
Remembrance, a play written by local playwright Ian Finley, is an absorbing drama which tells the stories of some of the men and women who founded the City of Raleigh, including well known individuals and less well known...
Sarah Polk, the wife of Colonel William Polk, came up with the idea that the City of Raleigh should be connected to the railroad... Anna Haywood Cooper, the daughter of a slave became an important educator, attended Oberlin College and lived to be 105... Jacob Johnson, the father of President Andrew Johnson, saved three men from drowning... and Joel Lane, who legend has it, served "Cherry Bounce" to sway the purchase of his property, which now is the land upon which the city was built.
The play was performed in June 2008 at All Saints Chapel and March 10, 2009 at the Meymandi Theatre at Murphey School.
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Photos: Bill Sandifer
Historic Preservation Workshops at City Cemetery
Raleigh City Cemeteries Preservation Inc. has held two preservation workshops at City Cemetery to discuss proper methods and materials used in historic preservation and conservation of cemetery monuments.
Above left, preservationist Dean Ruedrich demonstrates to Cam Church how to restore the stone of his great-great-great grandfather, Confederate Colonel Sion Hart Rogers, on February 23, 2008.
The stone for Annie Haywood, a granite cross, was repaired at a workshop held In June 2009, above right.
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Published Articles
"Raleigh City Cemeteries Preservation Inc.is a good idea at a good time, well worth public and private support. With more people living and working downtown, well-maintained and intelligently preserved cemeteries offer a green respite to strollers, and an outdoor history lesson for all who read the stories on the stones."
News & Observer, Editorial, May 21, 2007
Graveyard Shift
Things are stirring in some of Raleigh's oldest graveyards. The residents, we trust, remain at rest, but above ground plans are moving along for a welcome clean-up and fix-up effort at three historic city-owned cemeteries.
A consultant soon will offer a plan for maintaining, repairing and preserving the City, O'Rorke and Mount Hope cemeteries. City (also known as Old City) and O'Rorke are just east of downtown, and Mount Hope is to the south, between South Saunders and Fayetteville streets.
The Chicora Foundation of Columbia, S.C., which specializes in cemetery preservation, is to present its recommendations later this month. Its report is expected to call for an enlarged city maintenance staff. Meanwhile, a new private group, Raleigh City Cemeteries Preservation Inc., wants to help the city fix broken grave markers and start an online census of who's buried where.
A walk through the City graveyard, between New Bern and Hargett streets, shows there's much to be done. It's not that the old burial ground is poorly maintained -- the grass is mowed, and there's not much trash about -- but decrepitude prevails in the older sections. Gravestones tilt every which way; many of the larger monuments have broken or are crumbling.
The problem, apparently, is that the city doesn't take responsibility for individual graves, and in a cemetery that opened in 1798, not a lot of families today are going to either. The 19th century favored elaborate family monuments, and time has not been kind to them.
So Raleigh City Cemeteries Preservation Inc. (www.rccpreservation.org) is a good idea at a good time, well worth public and private support. With more people living and working downtown, well-maintained and intelligently preserved cemeteries offer a green respite to strollers, and an outdoor history lesson for all who read the stories on the stones.
Reprinted with permission from The News & Observer
City's past set for update
Three cemeteries may see makeover
May 21, 2007, By Josh Shaffer, Staff Writer
RALEIGH - O'Rorke Cemetery is easy to miss: an acre of grass near St. Augustine's College with a dozen-odd stones, many illegible from the work of lichens and centuries. Hidden under that grass, though, is a circus performer who died during a long-ago swing through Raleigh. There's Juanita Allen, whose epitaph reads simply: "Faithful Hilltop Church Bus Rider." Among them lie hundreds of forgotten folk who were too poor to afford a stone.
O'Rorke and Raleigh's two other city-owned graveyards could soon win new respect, recognition and repair.
In late May, the South Carolina preservationist Chicora Foundation will report on the best way to preserve O'Rorke, City and Mount Hope cemeteries -- parks that hold some of Raleigh's oldest and most colorful figures. Chicora's report, which cost about $25,000, will lay out a plan rather than start a stone-by-stone inventory, and it will likely recommend that Raleigh triple (from four to 12) the work force that looks after its cemeteries.
But with the help of a new private group, Raleigh City Cemeteries Preservation Inc., the city could eventually repair broken headstones, piece together shattered slabs and start an online database of everyone buried in all three graveyards.
Blight has struck all three, most notably City Cemetery, Raleigh's oldest dating to 1798 and the city's beginnings. President Andrew Johnson's father is buried there under a monument that crumbles to the touch. Early city leaders prominent enough to give their names to downtown street signs -- the Peace family, for one -- are remembered by marble as crushed and scattered as the Roman Forum. Many graves of slaves and freed blacks are not marked at all.
With its four workers, Raleigh only takes care of the grounds: cutting grass and weeding around stones. Tending to the stones themselves would be a big shift in philosophy, said Stephen Bentley, city park planner. "When a person gets a stone," he said, "they get a deed."
Restoring all three could potentially cost millions, depending on whether the city wants to add police patrols to curb vandalism, make stone-by-stone repairs or comb through old funeral home records to discover who is buried where.
But the idea is appealing to preservationists who see history and tourism combining around downtown. "The whole city is going through a renaissance right now," said Jane Thurman, chairwoman of Raleigh City Cemeteries Preservation. "We think these are important places."
The other cemeteries:
- O'Rorke: dating to 1858, it was originally a Catholic cemetery and consecrated ground. But as more people gravitated to nearby Oakwood Cemetery and its offer of perpetual care, and with some Catholic graves being moved from O'Rorke, it fell to Raleigh in 1938 and became a paupers' cemetery. So few stones dot the ground that the preservation group doubts it could meet standards for the National Register of Historic Places, unlike City and Mount Hope.
"We've had people who don't see value in O'Rorke," said Terry Harper, the preservation group's vice chair. "But those are people buried there, and they all had stories."
- Mount Hope: a black cemetery dating to 1872, it is the largest of Raleigh's three. Clarence Lightner, Raleigh's first black mayor, is buried there. W.H. Matthews, a contractor who built his mausoleum out of stones he collected from sites around North Carolina, none of them matching, is also buried there. A News & Observer account of his 1902 burial had Matthews interred in a glass coffin, perfectly preserved despite having been stored for months, waiting for his mausoleum to be completed.
Reprinted with permission from The News & Observer