Mount Olivet Cemetery (Nashville)


Mount Olivet Cemetery is a cemetery located in Nashville, Tennessee. It is located approximately two miles East of downtown Nashville, and adjacent to the Catholic Calvary Cemetery. It is open to the public during daylight hours.

History

Antebellum era

The Mount Olivet Cemetery was established by Adrian Van Sinderen Lindsley and John Buddeke in 1856. It was modelled after the Mount Auburn Cemetery. In the 1870s, a chapel designed in the Gothic Revival architectural style by Hugh Cathcart Thompson was built as an office.
The Southern aristocracy was buried in a separate section from common folks. These included planters as well as former governors of Tennessee, U.S. Senators, and U.S. Congressional Representatives. In the antebellum era, slaves were often buried near their owners.
Visitors to Nashville were buried alongside paupers.

Confederate circle

After the American Civil War, "the Ladies Memorial Society of Nashville with surviving Confederate veterans such as William B. Bate, Daniel Carter, General Benjamin Cheatham, and Thomas Harding purchased 26,588 square feet in the center of Mount Olivet and established Confederate Circle" for the interment of Confederate dead. It was used for the interment of Confederate soldiers who had died on nearby battlegrounds and as a memorial to their sacrifice. Women organized such memorial associations and raised money for interment of Confederate soldiers in major cities across the South and areas where there were concentrations of bodies. The memorial association arranged for burials of about 1,500 soldiers at Confederate Circle. They also built an obelisk.

World War I and beyond

A plaque in memory of Nashvillians who died in World War I was dedicated by General Hugh Mott in 1924.
The cemetery was purchased by Stewart Enterprises in 1994.
In 2015, the chapel, by then listed on the National Register of Historic Places, burned.

Notable burials