We have now reached the final stop on the tour, the Maury and Mt. Olivet Cemeteries. I would like to point out that there are a number of smaller cemeteries throughout the southside Richmond area, some of which include the graves of former residents of Manchester. These include the Weisiger-Carroll House in the Spring Hill neighborhood. During the Civil War, the house served as a hospital for wounded Confederate soldiers from South Carolina. While it is unknown how many soldiers were treated in this private home, over one hundred soldiers who died there are believed to be buried in an adjacent cemetery. Most previously existing family cemeteries were removed by the 1880s to allow for street grading and other infrastructure projects.

In 1872, the trustees of Manchester purchased land outside the limits of the town for a public cemetery. Prior to this, burials had been on private land within the town’s borders. As a result, several family plots and other cemeteries were located and emptied. Two years later, the city trustees created Maury Cemetery from three acres of the recently purchased ‘Buck Hill’ estate, named after Matthew Fontaine Maury, the famed oceanographer and former Confederate Naval officer, known as the ‘Pathfinder of the Seas.’ Remains formerly interred within the city limits were then moved to the new location.

Maury Cemetery was originally segregated. When Richmond annexed Manchester, the former city assumed administrative control of the cemetery, the only one south of the James. Two local members of the Manchester Love and Union club, a mutual aid society for African American residents of the area, petitioned the city to change the name of the colored section of the city to Mt. Olivet Cemetery. Richmond granted their request.

The Mt. Olivet section takes its name from an olive grove near the ancient city of Jerusalem that is believed to be where Jesus ascended into Heaven. The name was chosen to better reflect the south side community’s values. Notable burials include a free African American man born before the Civil War named Ballard T. Edwards. In 1865 Edwards paid to open a school for former slaves to teach them the trade of bricklaying. Later, Edwards represented Chesterfield County in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1869 to 1871, and was present at the fatal collapse of the balcony of the House of Delegates in 1870. He also served as a Justice of the Peace for Manchester and overseer of the poor for Chesterfield County. He attended the First Baptist Church of Manchester, now the First Baptist Church of South Richmond, and died in 1881.

Other notable burials include numerous Confederate soldiers, such as William Izard Clopton, captain of the Richmond Fayetteville Artillery, and many officers and enlisted soldiers of the Sixth Virginia Infantry ‘Manchester Grays.’ The author, poet, and educator David Lloyd Pulliam is interred here, as well.

There are several legends relating to the burials elsewhere in Manchester. According to one story, during the American Revolution, Baron von Steuben ordered that several American soldiers be buried near what is now the intersection of Semmes Avenue and Seventh Street. No reason is known to have been given for any burials at this location, but if any were made, it is presumed that they were moved and re-interred in Maury Cemetery when it was created. The first two burials here were a white man named John Anderson and an African American man named Monroe Davis, both of whom died before the cemetery was created. Shortly after opening, Maury Cemetery included 69 white and 29 black graves. In the twentieth century, the United Daughters of the Confederacy built a monument and flagpole dedicated to the Confederate soldiers buried in the cemetery. After World War I, a large memorial was built to honor those residents who fought and died in that conflict, many of whom had been residents of the city before consolidation. A similar monument later honored ‘sons of South Richmond’ who gave their lives in World War II. The American Legion currently maintains both memorials.

This concludes our tour of nineteenth century Manchester, Richmond’s ‘Little Sister’ across the James. Thank you for coming.