Thank you to the National Park Service for selecting our Historic American Landscape Survey (HALS) short form history of Evergreen Cemetery for an honorable mention in this years HALS Challenge: Historic Black Landscapes!
Evergreen is a 59.2-acre historic burial ground opened in 1892 that is owned and administered by The Enrichmond Foundation of Richmond, Virginia. As of 2021, 6,000 graves have been counted within the cemetery, but some estimates of the total number of deceased interred there reach as high as 30,000. In 2019, the cemetery was recognized as a “Site of Memory” associated with the UNESCO Slave Route project, which was launched in 1994 to explore the causes, modalities, and consequences of slavery and the slave trade in order to enhance mutual understanding and intercultural dialogue. As the final resting place for thousands of African Americans born during or shortly after the end of slavery in the U.S., Evergreen Cemetery has great potential to encourage reflection on their contributions to state and national history.
The Evergreen Cemetery Association was formed in 1891 to establish a black
burial ground that would rival Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery. In 1892, the association purchased forty-six acres of a rugged hillside and crowning plateau above Stony Run in eastern Henrico County to establish the cemetery; thirteen more acres were added in the early 1900s. The founding group commissioned the Richmond-based survey and engineering firm of John T. Redd & Sons to design the cemetery. Redd & Sons “graced the cascading hills with concrete walking paths and paved the main road into Evergreen from East Richmond Road with cobblestones to create a memorial park fit for royalty.” They designed the cemetery’s highest point as a scenic overlook from which to view an old mill pond and Stony Run below. From Stony Run Road, passers-by could look up to see the marble statues, granite obelisks, and elegant monuments that marked the burial places of Richmond’s Black elite. True to its mission, Evergreen became the final resting place of many of Richmond’s leading African American citizens, including businesswoman Maggie Lena Walker, publisher and editor John Mitchell, Jr., and community leader Rev. Andrew J. Bowler.
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