The Shockoe Hill Cemetery as it is presently known, was established in 1820, with the initial burial in 1822. It was also formerly known as the Shockoe Hill Burying Ground. This burying ground was the first to be planned, opened and operated by the City of Richmond, Virginia. The Shockoe Hill Cemetery expanded in 1833, in 1850, and in 1870, when it reached its present size of 12.7 acres. The 28 1/2 acre city of Richmond property on which the Shockoe Hill Burying Ground was established was acquired by the city in 1799 for the main purpose of it becoming a burying ground. It is also where the Poor-house was located. The burying ground was divided. It contained the walled Shockoe Hill Cemetery. It also contained the "Burying Ground for Free People of Colour" and the "Burying Ground for Negroes" which began as 2 one acre plats established in 1816. This burying ground for people of African descent was also greatly expanded. The 1835 Plan of the City of Richmond shows an expansion of at least an acre to the slave burying ground. In 1850 when the city added 5 acres to the walled Shockoe Hill Cemetery, it also added 9 acres to what would come to be labeled on the 1853 Map of the County of Henrico as the "African Burying Ground", and included the City Hospital grounds. An 1816 plan of the city property also depicts the areas in with which people of colour and white persons who died at the Poor-house were interred. The Shockoe Hill Cemetery is on the Virginia Landmarks Register and National Register of Historic Places. The City still owns and maintains the cemetery. The Friends of Shockoe Hill Cemetery, a volunteer group formed in 2006, acts as a steward of the cemetery and assist with upkeep and improvement, including organizing the placement of government-issue military markers. The African Burying Ground does not share this designation, and is largely unrecognized. Among many notables interred at the Shockoe Hill Cemetery are Chief Justice John Marshall, Unionist spymaster Elizabeth Van Lew, Revolutionary War hero Peter Francisco, and Virginia Governor William H. Cabell. More than a thousand servicemen are known to be buried here, including at least 22 Revolutionary War veterans; at least 400 War of 1812 veterans; and an estimated 800 Civil War soldiers, both veterans and wartime casualties. Members of the General Society of the War of 1812 have suggested that more veterans of that War are buried at Shockoe Hill, than at any other cemetery in the country. At least 2,000 Union Army Prisoners of War had been buried just outside the east cemetery wall in Shockoe Hill Cemetery's adjoining African Burying Ground during the Civil War, but the soldiers remains were moved to Richmond National Cemetery, three miles to the east. Two markers, one placed by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1938, and the other by the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States in 2002, memorialize those POW burials. The Cemetery is open to burials of family members in existing family plots; the last such burial occurred in 2003. In July 2016 the City reclaimed title to several unused plots, on one of which there are plans to install a columbarium with niches to hold urns with cremated remains. Those plots are available for purchase by the general public, marking the first sale of grave spaces in the Cemetery since about 1900. Shockoe Hill Cemetery is across the street from the Hebrew Cemetery of Richmond, a separate and privately owned cemetery. The invisible "Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground", established in 1816, was a segregated part of the Shockoe Hill Burying Ground. Its grounds were disposed of by the city, some of which became part of the Hebrew Cemetery. Its original 2 acres are located directly to the east of the Hebrew Cemetery at 5th and Hospital St. This burying ground is today also referred to by some as the "2nd African Burial Ground" or "second African Burying Ground" and "African Burial Ground II". It has suffered numerous atrocities over time, and to this day continues to be threatened.
Notable burials
The cemetery holds the graves of Chief JusticeJohn Marshall; attorney John Wickham ; Revolutionary War hero Peter Francisco; famed Union spy Elizabeth Van Lew, as well as many members of her spy network; John Minor Botts, a Congressman and later a dedicated Unionist who helped lead opposition to the Confederate government; Virginia Governor William H. Cabell; Virginia Acting Governors John Mercer Patton, John Rutherfoord, and John Munford Gregory; Judge Dabney Carr; United States SenatorsPowhatan Ellis and Benjamin W. Leigh; Dr. Daniel Norborne Norton, developer of the Norton grape; close to two dozen Revolutionary War veterans; and hundreds of Confederate soldiers. It is believed the more than 400 veterans of the War of 1812 buried here is the largest such assemblage in the country. Many people important in the life of Edgar Allan Poe, who grew up and lived much of his adult life in Richmond, are interred at Shockoe Hill. Among them are Frances K. Allan, beloved foster-mother to Poe, and her husband John; Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton, perhaps the great love of Poe's life; and Jane Stith Craig Stanard, wife of prominent judge Robert Stanard, a warm friend to a teenaged Poe, and the inspiration for his poem "To Helen".
