Virginia Historical Society Podcast

On December 7, 2017, Alyson Lindsey Taylor-White delivered a Banner Lecture entitled “Shockoe Hill Cemetery: A Richmond Landmark's History.” In 1822, Richmond’s Common Council faced a grave dilemma, literally. The nation, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the capital city of Richmond were in the grips of a severe economic depression, one of the young nation’s first. It was not a good time for the city to invest in capital improvements, much less acquire real estate. And yet they felt they had no choice but to do just that. In particular, the city faced a desperate shortage of available private and church properties to inter the dead safely and in a sanitary method. The decision was made to create Richmond’s first necropolis that would be designed for the living as much as for the dead. Created on the cusp of the rural cemetery movement that would soon sweep the nation, Shockoe Hill Cemetery was laid out by city surveyor Richard Young in 1824 to have a pleasing, picturesque, park-like setting. Famous occupant