Site Type: Cemetery or Memorial

Historical Significance:

The Douglass Memorial Cemetery, named for abolitionist Frederick Douglass, was established in 1895. A newspaper account of October, 1895 stated: “A force of workmen is employed in opening up the walks, grading the ground and grading an entrance at the new Douglass Memorial cemetery for colored people . . . The owners of the property [are] preparing to erect a monument in the center of the cemetery to the memory of Fred Douglass.” The earliest recorded burial is 1896, for Alexander Harden. A total of 671 burials have been documented in the cemetery.

The older gravestones are in the western half, grouped by family. From the placement of headstones in the eastern half of the cemetery, it appears that burials were sited chronologically starting in 1928. The uniformity of the headstones and the stone numbers in this section gives it an institutional quality. Several graves from the 1950s and 1970s in the northwest corner have cement or brick borders around them. Many of the gravestones have fallen into disrepair.

Douglass Cemetery is one of 13 graveyards located in the five-acre parcel southwest of Wilkes and Payne streets. Churches first developed graveyards on the parcel in the early 18th century, after Alexandria prohibited further grave digging in the city in 1804. Burial associations and the federal government located cemeteries here later in the century. Following the trend to locate graveyards further from city centers, the cemeteries were developed just over the city limits in Spring Garden Farm, one of two new settlements built west of town in the 1780s. Spring Garden was the less affluent area, an industrial section with brickyards and housing for poor people.

Douglass Memorial, built after Reconstruction, was one of the last additions to the cemetery complex. Nearby Black Baptist Cemetery, while officially established in 1885, had been a black burial site since before the Civil War. African-Americans were also buried in the municipal Penny Hill Cemetery, to the south, in the early decades of the 19th century. More than 200 African-Americans are buried in nearby Alexandria National Cemetery, formerly Soldiers’ Cemetery, which was established in 1862 for the burial of Union soldiers.

Physical Description:

From the order of gravestones on the eastern side of the cemetery, it appears that people were buried sequentially in the plots by date of death starting in 1928. The uniformity of the headstones and the stone numbers in this section gives it an institutional quality. The older graves are found on the western side of the cemetery where the gravestones are organized in the more common pattern of groups of relatives. Several graves from the 1950s and 1970s in the northwest corner have cement or brick borders around them. Many of the gravestones have fallen into disrepair.