burial ground ruggles 12-09

8/8/2019 Burial Ground Ruggles 12-09

1/19

The Burial Ground: an early African-American site in RichmondNotes on its history and location Jeffrey Ruggles, Dec. 2009

FIG.1 ATTHEBURIALGROUND SITE,NOV.2009

The Burial Ground for Negroes is probably the oldest site in Richmond, Virginia, witha specific African-American association. In use from the 1700s to about 1815, it isoverlooked by the standard city histories and was largely forgotten until recently. Now theBurial Ground has become a matter of public discussion. This paper explores the history of

the cemetery and its site and works toward an answer to the question of the day in 2009: theexact location of the site in the modern landscape.

McPhersons accountThe appearances of the Burial Ground in the historical record can be counted on one

hand: one contemporary map shows the cemetery and a few old books mention it. No bonesor artifacts are known. The only direct contemporary description of the Burial Ground forNegroes appears in the 1811 narrative of Christopher McPherson. McPherson (1763?1817),a free black, worked as a clerk in Richmond, probably as a freelance legal copyist, and ishimself quite an interesting story. McPherson was dissatisfied with what he called thedisgustful old burying ground, which he complained was made inaccessible to a carriageby a steep hilla carriage being McPhersons preferred means of travel.1

1 Christopher McPherson,A Short History of the Life of Christopher McPherson, alias Pherson, Son of Christ, King ofKings and Lord of Lords; containing A Collection of Certificates, Letters, &c., Written by Himself, Second Edition,(Lynchburg, Va., 1855), p. 21, 28. Available online at. An obituary for McPherson recalled him asnotable for his eccentricities and asked ye men of goodness to weed clear his grave. . . for he was yourbrother. The Virginia Patriot and Richmond Daily Mercantile Advertiser, 8 Sept 1817.

1


2/19

The Burial Ground: an early African American site in Richmond

FIG.2 VIEW OFRICHMOND ABOUT1805Deta il, The C ity of Richm ond , inset eng rav ing to A Ma p o f Virginia, by Jame s Ma d ison , (1818, orig.

1807). Virginia Histo rica l Soc iety. (Attributed to Sa int-Mem in in Weddell, Richmond in Old Prints.)

The Jam es River is in the foreground and the C ap itol is on the left. At c ente r right a re the steep ba re sides

of Co unc il Cha mb er Hill, a spu r tha t projec ted out to Shoc koe Creek on the right . The na me sake C ounc il

building is just to the right o f the sea m. Further right, the bu ild ing partly see n abo ut ha lfway d ow n the

slope is probably the Baptist church; on the hillside below it, not visible in this view, was the Burial Ground.

On the 16th day of June, 1810, the free people of color in this city, petitioned thecommon hall to grant them a new and eligible burying ground, wrote McPherson. Some sixmonths later the Council had still not acted, he continued:

I had an inspection, the other day, made of the present burying ground. It liesdirectly east of the Baptist meeting house, uninclosed, very much confined as tospace, under a steep hill, on the margin of Shockoe Creek, where every heavy raincommits ravages upon some one grave or another, and some coffins have alreadybeen washed away into the current of Shockoe stream, and in a very few years themajor part of them will no doubt be washed down into the current of James river;added to this, many graves are on private property adjoining, liable to be taken up

and thrown away, whenever the ground is wanted by its owners, (this is owing, eitherto confined space, or want of knowledge of what was public ground;) andfurthermore, we may add the humiliating circumstance, that this is the very expressgallows ground where malefactors are interred. 2

The information from McPherson conforms with the placement of the cemetery on an1809 map of Richmond (Fig. 6). Drawn by Richard Young, the City Surveyor, the Plan ofthe City of Richmond shows the Burial Ground for Negroes above Broad Street betweenShockoe Creek and the Baptist Church. As per McPherson, the letter N representing thegallows is located in the middle of the cemetery space.

In October 1812 the Council revived the memorial of sundry free people of colorpraying that a grave yard be granted to them. That memorial sounds like the 1810 petitionthat McPherson wrote about. In 1816 an ordinance established a new public buryingground for free people of color and for slaves in the City. The new city cemetery forpaupers and blacks was located up the valley from the old Burial Ground, about a mile awayon the hillside below the Alms House.3

2A Short History of the Life of Christopher McPherson, p. 21.3 Minutes of the Common Hall, Richmond, Vol. 5, p. 23 ; Richmond Enquirer, 22 Feb. 1816

2


3/19

FIG.3 THE SEVEN HILLS OF RICHMOND

Unc redited , probab ly by Richm ond Dep t. of Pub lic Works, c. 1930s.Anc ient Rom e w as built on seve n hills and b y selec tively c ounting Richmond ers ma de the same

c laim. The ma p ove rsimp lifies the terrain but is a useful ove rview . On C ounc il Cha mb er Hill, the

Ca pitol is at the H of Hill, and the Burial Ground for Neg roes was loc ated at the notc h on the

upp er side a bo ve the letters ER. (Nav y, French G arde n, and Counc il Cha mb er Hills have

disap pe ared as distinct fea tures. Betw een Union and Church Hills, the stream wa s c ove red and the

de c livity filled in the 1880s to be c om e Jefferson A venue .)

A transformed landscapeOne difficulty in determining the exact location of the site is that the terrain in the

vicinity of the Burial Ground has been much altered. The main hill in downtown Richmond,where the State Capitol and MCV Hospital sit, is Shockoe Hill. In the 1700s, the side of thehill facing east rose from now-vanished Shockoe Creek at its foot and was considerably

more irregular and steeper than today. A ridge-like arm of the main hill called CouncilChamber Hill projected out to the creek and its slopes were among the steepest.4

Over two centuries, a series of projects has altered the topography of that hillside. Thebiggest change was the 195658 construction of the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike (todayI-95), which wraps around the hillside and moved a large quantity of earth. Before that, in192627 the City converted Shockoe Creek from an open stream to a covered sewer. Duringthe c. 190015 construction of Main Street Station and its associated freight handlingfacilities, the C&O and Seaboard railroads raised the floor of Shockoe Valley in some placesto as much as fifteen feet over the original surface. And efforts to reduce the citys hillinessbegan long before then. In 1860, the chronicler Samuel Mordecai remarked that the original

and the present surface of the city may be compared to the contrast of the waves in a storm,and their subsistence during a calm.5 Among the ground-shaping projects that calmedMordecais earthly swells was one in 1830 and another in 1845, both to be described shortly,that took place directly on the site of the Burial Ground.

4 For simplicity, althoughRichmond streets are not oriented exactly north-south and east-west, the cemeteryand its neighboring streets are described as if they are.5 Samuel Mordecai, Richmond in By-Gone Days, (Richmond, 1946, orig. 1860), p. 62

3


4/19


A key question is whether there is anything left of the Burial Ground hidden beneaththe modern surface. Inspired by the 1991 discovery in Manhattan of a very old Africancemetery, preserved under alleys, there is the hopefor some, beliefthat under themodern features, old graves survive in Richmond, too. But the possibility of finding anyremnant seems far from a sure thing. Given the turbulent development history of the space,

at most a minor fraction might remain, for the majority of the cemetery is certainly gone.

The Burial Ground rediscoveredThe renewed interest in the Burial Ground for Negroes is one sign of heightened

attention to the history of African Americans and of sites associated with that history. In thiscase several things have come together: research into early black cemeteries by historians, asuccessful campaign to commemorate Gabriel with a marker at the site of his 1800execution, and reflected light from the nearby Lumpkins Jail archaeology dig. Little noticewas taken in 2008 when an arm of Virginia Commonwealth University purchased a parkinglot at 16th & Broad Streets, down the hill from the Medical College of Virginia, a division ofVCU. However VCUs intention to pave the lot did get noticed. On the grounds that VCUwould be paving atop gravesites, public protests were organized to oppose the work. 6

Because of the controversy, theVirginia Department of Historic Resources, DHR,undertook a study of the Burial Ground. The DHR inquiry into the the location andprobable condition of the former Richmond free black and slave burial ground known as theBurial Ground for Negroes(ca. 1750-1816) was conducted by archaeologist ChristopherStevenson in 2008 and is available online. 7 Stevenson used a method called georeference tolocate the site. Working from the presumption that the cemetery site corresponds to thelettering of the 1809 map, he obtained digital images of the 1809 map and of a modern aerialphotograph of the area, sized them to the same scale, found common reference points, andsuperimposed them. As shown on its page 11, the DHR report finds that the site of theBurial Ground lies mostly under I-95, with a portion extending into the parking lot that

VCU had planned to pave. This finding of the DHR report was the basis for VCU officialsto agree, after a meeting at DHR, to set aside and not pave the area of the potential overlap. 8In 2009 the reserved area has been partitioned off by a metal picket fence that runs fromBroad to about the south line of Marshall Street (Fig. 1).

The DHR way for locating the Burial Ground puts a lot of trust in the old map. Thatapproach might be called the 1809 map method. The discussion that follows will look atsome of the premises of that approach, in particular at the purposes for which the 1809 mapwas made, and suggest reasons that map might have a significant margin of error. Thenanother approach, the topographical method, will be offered, with a similar but notidentical conclusion to the 1809 map method.

6 The process that has brought the cemetery to public awareness is one of the topics discussed in the 2009video, Meet Me in the Bottom: The Struggle to Reclaim Richmond's African Burial Ground, produced byShaun Utsey, Chair of African American Studies at VCU. The video was presented to a full house at VCUsGrace Street Theater on 23 October 2009.7 Burial Ground for Negroes, Richmond, Virginia: Validation and Assessment, by Christopher M. Stevenson,2008, available online at . A listing ofmedia reports about the Burial Ground appears pp. 12.8 A Joint Statement by the Richmond Slave Trail Commission and Virginia Commonwealth University wasissued in July 2008.

4


5/19


Early Settlement at the FallsHow early was the origin of the Burial Ground for Negroes? Settlement at the Falls of

the James was underway during the latter 1600s. When Fort Charles was built at the Falls in1645, it was a military post beyond the frontier of colonial settlement. In 1675, when theoverseer at Nathaniel Bacons plantation was killed by an Indian raid, the frontier of

settlement was todays Jackson Ward. In 1699 French Huguenots helped to move thatfrontier west when they settled on the James River above the Falls.

On both sides of the river, the land at the lower end of the Falls came to William Byrd Iby the 1670s. When his son, William Byrd II, died in 1744, an inventory of the estate listed11 plantations at the Falls. By the early 1700s, at the mouth of Shockoe Creek was a smallscattered settlement that Byrd II called Shaccos. No date certain for its beginning isestablished. Byrd IIs storehouse there was built in 1712. The name is mentioned in HeningsStatues at Largein 1730 and in Byrd IIs writings in 1732. It was a center for the Byrd Fallsplantations, with a boat landing at the height of tidewater navigation, Byrds trading post andwarehouse, and a mill. By 1724 there was also a chapel, the original location of whichapparently gave Chapel Island at the mouth of the creek its name. Gathering on Sundays to

attend the chapel was likely a primary community tie for early residents of the Falls.9

FIG.4 APLAN OF956 ACRES OFLAND BELOW SHACCOE CREEKProp erty map, c . 171030, in Title Book of William Byrd II, VHS (Mss5:9 B9965:1)

In this ea rly map of future central Richm ond , the most evide nt fea ture, Shoc koe

Creek a t c ente r, is invisible tod ay. The p rope rty line tha t intercep ts the c reek is one

mile (320 poles) from the river. Its big tributary from the east is probably the stream

tha t sep arat ed Church a nd Union Hills and joined the m ain stream in the vicinity ofmo dern Broad or Grac e streets. On the b ank op po site and upstrea m w as the Burial

Ground . Gillies Creek is to the right of t he m ap .

9 Inventory of the Estate of William Byrd in the County of Henrico at the Falls of the James River in theYeare 1746, in The Correspondence of the Three William Byrds of Westover, Virginia, 16841776, (Charlottesville,1977), vol. 2, p. 599; William Byrd II, A Progress to the Mines in the Year 1732, in The Prose Works of WilliamByrd of Westover, ed. Louis B. Wright, (Cambridge, MA, 1966) p. 339-42; W. L. Burton, Annals of HenricoParish, in History, Henrico Parish and Old St. Johns Church, ed. J. Staunton Moore, (Richmond, 1904), p. 12.

5


6/19


Among these residents were numerous African Americans. As early as the 1670sWilliam Byrd I made promises, as a condition for obtaining land, to settle a certain numberof people at the Falls, a count that included African slaves. Byrd I is known to have been anowner of a ship bringing slaves from Africa in the 1690s. The 1746 inventory made afterByrd IIs death counted in the eleven plantations at the Falls altogether some 242 slaves. No

doubt black inhabitants of the Falls plantations gathered at Shaccos on Sundays too, some asthe oarsmen for the boats that carried the whites to church, or assigned to handle the horses,but perhaps for religious services or Sunday school as well. Evidently gatherings of blacksfor special events were not uncommon, for an act of the Virginia Assembly in 1680 openedwith the statement that the frequent meeting of considerable numbers of negroe slavesunder pretence of feasts and burials is judged of dangerous consequence.10

If Africans began to arrive at the Falls plantations in numbers during the 1690s, burialsfor some might have been necessary by 1700 or so. The Buriall of Servants had beenaddressed in a 1661 act of the Assembly, which among its provisions stated: Be it enactedthatthere in every parish three or fower or more places appointed to be sett apart and fencedin, for places of publique burialAnd be it further enactedthat noe persons whether free or

servants shall be buried in any other place then those soe appointed.11

These circumstances suggest that the Burial Ground for Negroes could have begunbefore the founding of Richmond in 1742, as a cemetery for the Byrd plantations at the timeof the Shaccos community. The site of the Burial Ground would have been a plausiblechoice for an early period, as land not prominent or likely to be productive, and neither tooclose nor too far away. A possible scenario is that the plantation burial ground wasdesignated as a municipal site around the time the town established a municipal cemetery inthe yard of St. Johns Church in 1751. 12

When Richmond was founded in 1742, the land between Shockoe Creek, the town

border on the west, and the first street, todays 17th

Street, was designated as TownCommons. The Public Market evolved in this space and the Cage, the lock-up, was alsoput there. The Burial Ground was on the opposite side of the creek from the commons,outside the original town limits, but facilities near it suggest that its vicinity also becamecommons (municipal records that might confirm it are lacking). In 1809 not only was thecemetery there but also the powder magazine and the gallows. McPherson implied the BurialGround was considered commons when he wrote that many graves are on private landadjoining owing to want of knowledge of what was public ground.13

10 Louis B. Wright, William Byrd I and the slave trade, Huntington Library Quarterly, v.8 (1944-1945), p. 379-387; Hening, Laws of Virginia, Vol. 2, p. 481.11 Hening, Laws of Virginia, Vol. 2, p. 53. The necessity of the act seems to have arisen from an incident or

incidents in which a master killed a servant and then buried the body secretly to forestall inquiry. In the 19thcentury servants meant slaves, but in the 17th century it could also refer to indentured servants. The fencingwas to keep wild hogs from uprooting the corpses. By the mid-1700s the law was no longer on the books, butit does show that attention to such subjects began early.12 In early years, not all Virginia places had committed to the custom of separate black and white burials. It isquite likely that a number of early burial sites at the Falls went unmarked and unrecorded and therefore are notknown. St. Johns did not obtain that name until the 19th century.13 Originally, at the founding of the town, the land between Cary St. and the River was also designatedcommons. That strip of riverbank seems to have been relatively park-like until the city sold it in the 1810s. Thecreek-side commons was more functional with clothes washing, the slaughterhouse, and the tan yard.

6


7/19


Youngs 1809 mapThe 1779 act for the removal of the Seat of Government from Williamsburg to

Richmond established a board called the Directors of Public Buildings. Initially headed byThomas Jefferson, the Directors of Public Buildings not only created Capitol Square andbuilt the Capitol, but also managed planning for the city, laying out and naming streets and

so forth. After the initial directors were appointed, however, no new ones ever were. By1800 deaths and unavailability inhibited the functioning of the Directors, which in turnimpeded the progress of the city. Finally an act in 1805 devolved certain planning powersfrom the state Directors to the city, and the Richmond Common Council began to fendmore for itself in such matters. 14

The 1805 act authorized the city to hire a mathematical surveyor on the same basis asin counties: he would prepare all property plats within the jurisdiction for a set fee. The menof property who sat on Council understood the value of well-defined plats, especiallybecause that body had become the arbiter for a series of property line disputes that took up agood deal of its time. With its new authority, later in 1805 the Council called for a generalsurvey of the city by the city surveyor, to include three fair and complete plats or maps,

thereof. This task awaited the surveyor who was eventually appointed, Richard Young.

The Citys need was for an accurate map to help to define property and to show plansfor streets. Most of the property titles in the city traced back to Byrd family holdings, asparcels from Byrd IIs 1737 map or from Byrd IIIs 1768 lottery map. Thus a map that laidout the numbered Byrd parcels provided a stable basis for property ownership. When Youngdid produce the map, it was not simply for historic interest that he included as an inset APlan of the 100 acre Lots in Byrds Lottery of 1768.

Only a single original of Youngs map is extantif the three copies called for by theCouncil resolution were made, two have not survived.15 One imagines Young combined his

own fieldwork with information from plats and deeds filed with the court. One characteristicof the Young map is its combination of the built and the planned. Indeed, Youngs title for it

14Ordinances of the Corporation of the City of Richmond and the Acts of Assembly Relating Thereto, (Richmond, 1831), AnAct, for the removal of the Seat of Government, 1779, p. 6; An Act, for locating the Publick Squares, toenlarge the Town of Richmond, and for other purposes, 1780, p. 9; An Act, authorizing the appointment ofa Mathematical Surveyor of the City of Richmond, and for other purposes, 1805, p. 25. Two 1805 letters fromA Citizen argued for a general survey of the city and establishing street right-of-ways. Virginia Argus, 16Nov, 4 Dec. 1805.The state Directors redid the citys street grid c. 1781, switching street names so the original 1st St. becamemodern 17th St. and placing a new 1st St. to the west (where it remains). By 1808 a Common Council committee

provided names for streets the state group had overlooked.15 A Plan of the City of Richmond, by Richard Young, c. 180910. The original is at Library of Virginia(G3884.R5 1809 .Y68). In 1916 a tracing of the original was made by William J. Moll of the City Engineersoffice. The tracing, probably on thin paper, does not survive, but a negative photocopy of it is at LV(G3884.R5 1809 .Y68 1916). The 1916 version does not include the Burial Ground for Negroes. In 1932 W. F.Beaman of the Bureau of Survey & Design, City Dept. of Public Works, produced a copy of the 1809 map thatis the one reproduced and used today. For a photocopy in 1932, first a negative was made and then a positivefrom that. Beaman likely had access to the original but probably also worked from a photocopy. A photocopyof the original in 6 parts is at VHS, probably the copy supplied to Alexander Weddell, who checked Beamansinterpretation and sent several letters suggesting changes (Mss2 W4127 b, Weddell Correspondence, 1932).

7


8/19


Fig. 5 APLAN OF THEC ITY OFRICHMOND,by Richard Young, manuscript, c. 180910The origina l of Young s 1809 ma p a t Library o f Virginia is we ll worn, with sta ins, tea rs, and missing

segments.

FIG.6 DETAIL FROM 1932 COPY OFYOUNG S1809 MA P, VHS (Map F234 R5 1809:1 (1932 fac s.))The Jam es River is below, a nd Broad is the topmo st street tha t c rosses horizont a lly. The Buria l

Ground is at cente r towa rds the to p; the pa th of Shoc koe C reek is only faintly visible on this

reproduction. Around the Burial Ground is blank space, explained by terrain the map does not

indica te: the steep slop es of Co unc il Cha mb er and Shoc koe Hills and the va lley of Shoc koe C reek.

8


9/19

9

is Plan of Richmond. Not all of the streets shown on the map had been opened in 1809. Inmany cases the right-of-ways for streets had been designated but the land remained fields orwoods; the map recorded both the citys accomplishments and its intentions.

In particular, Broad street had not yet been opened up the slope of Shockoe Hill. From

the top of the hill on the west, the street descended only to the Baptist Church at todaysCollege Street.16 From the east, Broad stopped at Shockoe Creek. On the map, the section ofBroad Street drawn as if it was next to the Burial Ground did not physically exist; it was only aplan. The maps apparent indication that the Burial Ground was bounded on the south byBroad street was not actual; the cemetery could have extended below the line of the street.17

Another characteristic of Youngs map is that all of its features are not equal. It is a mixof the measured and the approximate. The measured are the streets and plats that conform tothe relevant ordinances and property records. The approximate are about a dozen features onthe map that Young probably did not have a plat or court paper to work from, or a goodreason to go to the trouble to survey accurately. One example is Shockoe Creek, which issimply sketched. The creek was changeable, nonetheless another surveyor a few years

beforewith reason to do sorendered the meanders of the creek with a good bit moreaccuracy (as will be seen in Figs. 8 & 9).

One key question is whether the words Burial Ground for Negroes as lettered on themap are spaced to represent the extent of the cemetery. It is reasonable to assume Young hadthat intent to some degree. The follow-up question is whether he carefully positioned thewords or approximated, as with the nearby creek. A further question is which definition of thecemetery Young was describing. Recalling McPhersons statement that many graves are onprivate property adjoining, there would be two ways to describe the Burial Ground: theofficial cemetery, located on public commons land, versus the actual extent of the graves,which went beyond the public land. As the Citys maker of lines, one assumes Young would

have recognized only the official bounds and not legitimized the trespassers. Further, giventhat the cemetery was unfenced, that burials had begun many years before, and presumablyfew gravesif anywere marked by cut headstones, could the mapmaker in 1809 have evenknown the full extent of burials well enough, if such had been his aim, to mark it accurately?Possibly not.

Perhaps the fuzziness of the official and the actual was a reason Young did not draw theBurial Ground with a boundary line. The official cemetery was not as extensive as the actualburials but also was undefined on the map. For the City Surveyor to have given the BurialGround a boundary might have been more official recognition than was desired. As the citygrew, the sloped land that was centrally located but difficult to develop began to be more

attractive, because with higher property values the cost of making it useful could be recouped.

16 The Baptist Church was thus down at the end of the street and somewhat at the edge of settlement on ShockoeHill. No doubt pedestrian paths did ascend the slope but not necessarily where streets were planned. No streetsclimbed Shockoe Hill north of Franklin Street until the 1840s. (Broad St. also did not ascend Church Hill to theeast for a long timethat hill was reached via 25th St. The climb from Main St. up 25th to St. Johns was likely theoriginal church hill that came to name the neighborhood.)17 To draw the Burial Ground as extending below Broad St. would have complicated Youngs visual design. Itwould also have put the planned route of Broad street across a cemetery, possibly a complication the mapmakerpreferred not to suggest.


10/19


In 1811 and 1812, the City petitioned the General Assembly for permission to sell itsCommons, presumably including land along the creek. In 1813 the state authorized the City todo so. If that intention was already under discussion when Young was drawing his map, anundefined Burial Ground for Negroes might have seemed easier to disestablish.18

Finally, as one more possible imprecision, Youngs map includes, along with streets andproperties, notable buildings and places in the city, lettered A to Z. Close by the BurialGround is a square dot labeled M, listed in the legend as the magazine.19 Located in themiddle of the Burial Ground is N, which marks the gallows. If, when drawing his map,Young marked the gallows with a dot and N before he lettered Burial Ground forNegroesand that sequence is the way it appearsthe placement of the latter on the mapcould have been affected by the placement of the former, particularly if the former was drawnbefore the notion arose to mark the latter. Young presumably wished to show by theplacement of the word Negroes that the cemetery extended east of the gallows site, but inorder to not write too closely to the N that word might have been pushed too far right.Because precision regarding the cemetery was not a priority, Young might have fudged a bit onthe cemetery location to achieve readability.20

FIG.7 DETAIL OFYOUNG S1809 MA P, VHS(Map F234 R5 1809:1 (photo))Seen through a go od bit of visual noise, the map sec tion is enlarge d from a c . 1930 neg a tive

photo sta t (at LV)of the original 1809 ma p. A tear in the original has taken aw ay p ortions of the w ords

Ground and for, and also the squa re d ot representing the ga llows, and p art of the N .

Thus we may summarize the potential difficulties with Youngs 1809 map regarding theBurial Ground for Negroes as these: 1) the focus for Youngs accuracy was on properties

18 Common Hall, 16 Dec. 1811, to dispose of commons, Reel 221, Box 277, Folder 20; Common Hall, 9 Dec.1812, to dispose of commons, Reel 221, Box 277, Folder 27, in Legislative Petitions, LV.19 The Magazine was for the storage of gunpowder and was probably under the control of the Public Guard, thestates small standing military force, established after Gabriels Rebellion in 1800 and stationed at Capitol Square.20 One presumes the gallows, like the other alphabetic structures, was marked by a square dot, but the originalmap is torn at that place and no mark is visible. Whether the square dot was to the left of the Nas drawn inthe 1932 copyor below the N is not evident from the reproductions available; possibly in the original there isa vestige of the dot on the edge of the tear. Typically gallows were not left standing between uses but wereerected when an execution was scheduled; thus the N marked the spot that a gallows would be set up, notnecessarily a structure that remained in the cemetery.

10


11/19


and streets, and because the cemetery was neither, his drawing of it might have been lessprecise; 2) Broad Street, drawn as a border to the Burial Ground, was not yet built but only aplanned right-of-way, so the cemetery could have extended farther in that direction; 3) themapmakers mission would have been to describe the cemetery as it existed on publicCommons and not necessarily the full extent of its burials; 4) future development possibilities

provided a motive to minimize and leave undefined the cemetery; 5) as a lower priority mapfeature, legibility may have been more important than precision for the cemetery. Each ofthese suggests a possible reason for less trust in the maps delineation of the Burial Ground. 21

Evidence of topographyA different way to position the Burial Ground site is to look at the topographical history.

Youngs 1809 map is relied upon for the general location of the cemetery but does not containinformation about topography. Other maps and pictures do. Especially useful are maps fromc.1800, 1830, and 1835, and photographs from c.1920, 1948, and 1865. The cemetery is notknown to have been rectangular, nonetheless the bounds or limits will be discussed as if itwere four-sided.

Burial Ground site, east side: a physical limitA map created for a court case offers a valuable bit of geographical information (Fig. 8).

The maker was Benjamin Bates (1769-1812), long the surveyor for Hanover County. Becausethe legal dispute was over a property line, the map is measured and attentive to features suchas trees, ditches, and the former paths of the creek. 22 The key detail: to the left, or west, of thecreek, just above the line of Broad streetright where the Burial Ground was locatedis thedescription: High Bank. That the words are written very close to the stream also implies thebank had a steep slope (Fig. 9).

At least along that portion of the creek, just above Broad, this high bank probablyrepresents the eastern edge of the cemetery. A high bank at this location fits well with what

else is known of the Burial Ground. It would place the cemetery at a higher level than thecreek bed, but still well below the top of the hillside. It works too with McPhersonsdescription: on the margin of Shockoe Creek, where every heavy rain commits ravages uponsome one grave or another, and some coffins have already been washed away into the currentof Shockoe stream.

No view of that high bank is known, but there is a photograph that offers a hint (Fig. 10).Made before 1927, it looks north from the Marshall Street viaduct and shows Shockoe Creekand its banks. From the upper end of the cemetery site, the scene is about a block north. Ifthe high bank at the Burial Ground was similaralthough perhaps not so tallit is areasonable assumption that no burials would have been made on a slope of such an angle. The

cemetery would have spread to the edge of the bank up on topas McPherson said, on themargin of Shockoe Creek. It is traditional in many cultures to locate a cemetery on a hillside,

21 Questions about the 1809 map method were also raised in a Sept. 2008 review of the DHR report by MichaelL. Blakey of the College of William & Mary.22 There are two versions of this map, one at VHS illlustrated here (Mss2 B9966 c 15) and another at LV,illustrated in Virginia in Maps(Richmond, 2000), p. 66. Library records date the map to c.1800, but it could be tenyears earlier or later than that. Apparently the issue in the case, Byrd v. Adams, was language in a propertydescription that referred too loosely to Shockoe Creek and allowed multiple interpretations. In the meantime thecreek changed course and created more uncertainty.

11


12/19


FIG.8 MAP FORBYRD V.ADAMS [Ma p o f] co py of surveys [of Richmo nd, Va.] ma de by order of the [Virginia] high c ourt of chanc ery

[in the c ase o f] [?] Byrd vs. [?] Ad ams taken b y Ben j[am in] Ba tes, c . 1800), VHS (Mss2 B9966 c 15).

Draw n on the m od el of Byrd IIs original 1737 ma p o f Richm ond by William Ma yo.

FIG.9 DETAIL OFMAP FORBYRD V.ADAMS

Lots 99 and O at right a re a t the m od ern intersec tion of 18th & Broa d Stree ts. If the top line o fBroad St. is follow ed left to the c reek, the d esc ription High ba nk is on the left, or west, ba nk. Next to

the c reek are a rea s of do t pa ttern that p rob ab ly ma rk low-lying c reek be d, ea sily flood ed at high

wa ter and suitab le neither for building or burying

FIG.10 SHOCKOECREEK, C .1920.PHOTOGRAPH BY R.LANCASTER,VALENTINERICHMOND HISTORY CENTERThe view is from the Marsha ll St. Viad uc t. It wa s ma de afte r the Viad uc t op ened in 1911 and before

Shoc koe Creek was c ove red ove r in 1927. Oc cupying this spac e tod ay a re I-95 and the multi-level

MC V pa rking d ec k at C lay St; and King Bridg e c rosses the valley just beyond .

12


13/19


but no one buries in a creek bed. If a geologist, today, could use core samples to establishwhere Shockoe Creek ran at its most westerly, the Burial Ground would start west of that.23

Burial Ground site, north & east sides: the Jail & Creek projects of 183035The eastern edge of the cemetery, then, would not have extended beyond the old bed of

Shockoe Creek. A clue regarding the northern extent of the cemetery is found in an unusualbook about Richmond. Hidden Things Brought to Lightwas written and published by ErnestWalthall (1848-1912). The original edition in 1908 was only 8 copies. Walthall was a Richmondprinter who made the book in spare time at work, a few pages at a time, not working from atext but composing it directly in type without a paper original. It is a stream of consciousnessaccount of memories of things about old Richmond, things he saw and things he had beentold. In talking about cemeteries Walthall states, In digging foundation for old city jail therewere signs of a burial place, and the bones were so large they were classed giants. The jail wasbuilt in 1830, and Walthall was not born until 1848, so this is a story he heard from others.24

Walthalls account probably understates how many bones were found. Old City Jail waslocated on Marshall street, just west of 15th. There was much digging when the jail was built.

During the 1820s and 30s, as Richmond became more urban, a number of terracing projectswere undertaken on the slopes of Council Chamber Hill and Shockoe Hill to create lots fordevelopment. One was for the jail. The site preparation required that part of the hillside bedug away for the structure, and then more excavation carved out a jail yard. On the west lineof the jail lot a tall stone wall held back the hillside, then the wall turned and went a ways easton the south line of the lot.25

As one of the largest of the terracing projects, the jails impact can been seen in an 1835map (Fig. 11). Among the most informative of early Richmond documents, the map wasproduced by Micajah Bates (1797-1861), who succeeded Richard Young as City Surveyor. Itwas issued as an engraving and is the first printed map of Richmond.26

The reproduced detail has City Jail towards the top. The map shows that by its 1835 dateof issue, Shockoe Creek was being rerouted. The Old bed Shockoe Creek runs up to the lineof Broad Street and stops. The new bed lies to the right or east. Whereas the old bed was anatural creek, the straight section of the new bed, running from below Broad to aboveMarshall street (near the top of the map detail), was a stone-lined channel built like a canal.The 1830 Prison Rules map (Fig. 12) indicates that the old bed of the creekthe portion

23 Atop the rise of the high bank would also have been a plausible location for the gallows. In the 18th and early19th centuries, execution was not private, rather it was a public spectacle. The sheriff would have erected thegallows in a visible spotpeople were meant to see and heed the example.24 Ernest Walthall, Hidden things brought to light, by author : family history, evacuation day, 60 years in a city, a youth's travels,

the business bridge, how Capitol square has looked, (Richmond, 1908). From the two 1908 copies at VHS, a reprint wasproduced in 1933 by the Press of the Dietz Printing Co. that includes marginal notes by the author.25 The walls are visible in photographs made during the construction of I-95 in the 1950s. Other terracingprojects nearby included cutting Mayo Street through on Council Chamber Hill in the early 1820s, and on thelower portion of that hill Mayos Additionthe Mayo family owned most of Council Chamber Hillon BirchAlley (15th street extended) in the late 1820s. The archaeological dig at Lumpkins Jail on the east side of BirchAlley uncovered a terrace wall. Photographs show several sections of stone walls along Birch Alley that may havesuggested the alternate name for 15th St. used in the 1850s, Wall Street.26 Micajah Bates, Plan of the city of Richmond drawn from actual survey and regional plans, engraving, 1835. (VHS: hand-colored copy: o.s. Map F234 R5 1835:1).

13


14/19


FIG.11 DETAIL FROM 1835MAP OFRICHMOND, Plan o f the c ity of Ric hmond drawn from ac tual surveyand reg iona l plans, b y Mic a jah Bate s (VHS, o.s. Ma p F234 R5 1835:1)To the left, ma rked L and divided by the sea m in the ma p , is First Bap tist Church. The horizonta l

street a t cente r labeled 66 feet w ide is Broad St., bu t no ma rkings d ifferentiate b etw ee n the street

where op ened and where only planned . In 1835 Broa d stopp ed at Shoc koe Creek on the e ast (note

the foo tbridg e there), and on the west end ed just b elow the Bap tist c hurc h a t Ma yo street. In April

1844, in fac t, a reque st c am e b efore Counc il that the p rec ipic e of the e astern end of Broa d

Stree tat M ayo Streetbe p rotec ted by a suffic ient railing to ensure its safe ty.

FIG.12 DETAIL FROM 1830 MA P Prison Rules Presc ribed by the Hustings of the C ity of Richmo nd , M arch 2, 1830. Neg ative

pho toc opy, ma de c . 1933 (VHS, Mss11:3 R4154:1 o.s.).

The map wa s prep ared to show the route tha t a p risone rpresuma bly a trustywas allowe d to take

on errands for the jail.

14


15/19


missing in the 1835 mapmeandered as far west as the line of 15 th (another planned but notbuilt street) just above Broad before it curved back to the east.

It is possible, indeed probable, that the excavation of the jail site and the filling in of theold bed of the creek were related. The earth removed for the terracing had to be put

somewhere, the closer the better. The city employed a work gang of hired slaves who loadedmule-carts for such projects. The creek took up too much real estate when allowed to take itsmeandering way. Shifting it east to a new straightened channel fit the grid better and tookpotential problems of flooding and aroma farther from the jail and Lancastrian school.27

The jail and creek projects executed over 183035 were consequential for the BurialGround site. The jail excavation mostly cleared the north portion of the Burial Ground. Onthe 1835 Bates map, the creek bed disappears not only next to the jail, but also by the twoRutherfoord lots adjacent. These lots, central to the cemetery site, included or were very nearthe high bank noted by the 1800 Benjamin Bates map. The surface of the Rutherfoord lotswas not lowered like the jail lot (as Fig 15 shows), but the available evidence does not indicatehow the creek-filling project might have affected the lower, eastern end of the lots. In that

work, the top of the creek bank might have been shaved down to make the slope moregradual. This obscure landscaping history becomes significant because this area might wellreach to the 2009 grassy hillside that is within the set-aside parcel and not covered by I-95.

Burial Ground site, south sideThe 1830 Prison Rules map (Fig. 12) provides a clue to the southern extent of the

Burial Ground. It was drawn to show where trusted prisoners could travel when runningerrands for the jail. At that date, the line of Broad street below the Baptist church was only aplan, meaning the cemetery could have extended beyond that line. In fact the 1830 mapdepicts a gully in the middle of Broad street. This gully suggests a limit, if not to burials,because the gully might have appeared in the fifteen years since the cemetery closed, but rather

to surviving graves. McPhersons complaint of graves being washed away might as easily havebeen gully-induced as creek-induced.28

A big change on the south side of the Burial Ground site came in 1845. The owners ofthe land at the crest of Council Chamber Hill, the Mayo family, wished to flatten the hilltopfor development. They proposed to use the fill produced by the excavation to build a ramp tocarry Broad Street across the valley of Shockoe Creek. In this period of active railroadconstruction, inclined planes were a familiar construction project. The Council agreed to theplan, and directed the city surveyor to set the bounds and angle of descent. The ramp thatresulted conveys Broad Street traffic today. A visible artifact is the stonework on both sides ofthe street (Fig. 13), left from the bridge built 1845 as a stone arch over Shockoe creek. 29

27 It is possible that burials north of the jail site, or east of the jail site between there and the creek bank, were notexcavated during 183035, and that under everything graves remain. Some of the earth from the jail excavationmay have modified the slope of Marshall Street. It is within possibility that human remains were contained in thefill put into the old creek bed.28 If not the gully itself, the slope of the hillside was likely a barrier to the cemetery extending farther south. If thegully was located on the line of Broad street by 1830, any graves that had been in its path would have beenwashed out, thus it would represent a limit to finding burials today.29 In the excavation, fossil deposits were found in the top of Council Chamber Hill; therefore the ramp was builtby slaves from ancient shells.

15


16/19


FIG.13 STONEWORK OF 1845 BRIDG E OVER CREEK, SOUTH SIDE OF BROAD ST.When Shoc koe Creek was c ove red ov er in 1927, stone s from the a rch we re probab ly recyc led to

c lose up the sides. In 1845, just up the hill was First Africa n Bap tist Church , with a congrega tion o f

seve ral thousand , mostly slaves. On Sundays befo re and a fter churc h, ma ny wo rshippers ga thered

on the ne arby streets to socia lize. The stones set up right on top of the wa lls we re no t only d ec orative

bu t func tional: they kep t the black Sunday socializers from sitting o n the b ridge .

FIG.14 VIEW UP BROAD STREET, PHOTOGRAPH 1948The p hoto graph w as taken on the Che sape ake & Ohio Railway trestle, loo king up the Broa d Street

ram p to First Africa n Baptist Church a nd MC V Hospital a top Shoc koe Hill. City Jail is the white build ing

a t right; beyo nd it is the M arsha ll St. Viad uc t. Bene at h the BO of Sea bo ard is the stone wo rk of the

1845 arch o ver Shoc koe Creek. At c ente r is the t hree -story Central Publishing Co . building , loc at ed a

ha lf-b loc k ea st o f the jail, at t he site o f the 2009 grassy hillside seen in Fig. 17. (The bric ks of its NE

c orner are visible in the g round at the Burial Ground site, next to the old p aved lot.)

16


17/19


Burial Ground site, west sideOn the fourth side of the Burial Ground, the west, no physical feature suggests a bright

line of demarcation. About two-thirds of the way up the side of Shockoe Hill was Church St.(today College St.). Buildings on the east side of that street included the Baptist Church atBroad and several dwellings, all of which perched above while the land in back fell below. The

slope in these lots was probably the steep hill that McPherson said prevented him fromvisiting the cemetery in a carriage. Even if no exact boundary is evident, the combination ofthe private property owners and the steep upper slope would have presented a practicalwestern limit to the spread of the Burial Ground, east of College Street.30

The earliest comprehensive view of the Burial Ground site is in a photograph made in1865 at the end of the Civil War (Figs. 15, 16). The Library of Congress has made availableonline a digital file of this image big enough to enlarge a small section. In the photograph, thesteepness of the slope just below College Street is evident. Down the hillside the slope seemsless severe. Because of the cameras position, the lowest parts of the valley including the creekbed and banks are not visible. For the lower visible portions of the old Rutherfoord lots,where in the photograph are slave quarters and a barn, no evidence of any earth-moving

projects has been found. There the land surface seen in the photograph could be much as itwas when the cemetery was in use.31

The Burial Ground site todayEven if graves spread well beyond the area marked on the 1809 maps, most of the Burial

Ground site is under I-95. The fate of the graves in the cemetery is that they either remainburied deeply or were removed. Might there be any graves that are deep-buried yet not underan immoveable roadway?

VCU has installed a metal fence that partitions off a section of its 16th & Broad parkinglot (Fig. 1). The fence provides two sides to a parcel of land bounded by Broad Street on the

south, I-95 on the west, and the fence on the north and east. The east fenceline is based on thegeopositioning of the cemetery using the 1809 Young map. The north fenceline is on thesouth line of Marshall St. This cemetery parcel has two distinct sections. On the east isformer parking lot, low, flat, and paved. On the west are slopes with grass and trees that rise toI-95 and to Broad.

As to where graves, in theory, might be accessible, it would only be east of I-95. TheBurial Ground never extended beyond the western side of I-95. (We will assume that thesizeable I-95 median west of the southbound lanes below College St. is not accessible.)Towards the south, there could be graves underneath Broad Streetin fact this might be oneof the most likely spotsbut accessible graves would have to be north of Broad.32

30 Vestiges of the upper slope today include bulwarks along the west side of new 14th Street from Franklin toBroad, and along the west side of Interstate 95 below former First African Baptist Church.31 The 1865 photograph by Andrew J. Russell from which the section is enlarged is an 11x14 in. contact print.Another photograph from the same vantage point was made in 1865 by Alexander Gardner, as one plate of apanorama of Shockoe Valley made from five 8x10 in. plates. Russell may have used a better lens and did have alarger negative; the detail in his view appears to be better.32 The DHR report noted maps and cross-section diagrams from the Richmond Petersburg Turnpike Authoritythat show a great deal of fill under the northbound lanes in the vicinity of the cemetery site. The cross-sectionimages were not of good enough quality to include in the report, however.

17


18/19


FIGS.15,16 DETAIL FROM 1865 PHOTOGRAPH, BY ANDREW J.RUSSELL

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Dept., LC-B8184-10228The v iew is from Church Hill tow ards Shoc koe Hill, shortly a fter the end of the C ivil War. This part of the

c ity was una ffec ted by the Eva c uat ion Fire. The p hoto grap her Russell wa s a Union army c apta in.

On the left is Athe Broa d St. ramp ; visible on its left Bthe 45-deg ree sides of the ram p , on the righ t

Cten rising houses c alled Rutherford s Row , built a top the side of the ramp . On the left side of the

street a re telegrap h po les and Dthe stone wo rk of the a rch over the c reek. The d a rker build ings

along the bo ttom e dg e of the ima geE are on the nea r side of the c reek, on 18th and 19th streets. The

Egyp tian BuildingF a t up pe r left c ente r is on Co lleg e St.; to its left is Gthe d om ed -roo f Mo nume nta l

Church. Below and in front of there, behind trees and a dark house, is Hthe First African Baptist

Chu rch. These bu ild ings sit ato p a steep slope.

To the right of the Egyp tian Building , coming d ow n the hill is Ia winding pa th whic h c ontinues

Ma rshall St. Below the pa th is J City Jail, som ew ha t ob sc ured b y smo ke: a b ig squa re building w ith 4

c himne ys and several sec tions. To its left is a w hite tw o-sto ry house tha t sits a t the top of the stone

retaining wa ll of the e xca va ted jail yard. Shoc koe C reek flow s be yond Lthe Lanc astrian Sc hoo l, and

at the base of Ka steep, cliff-like bank. Possibly the smoke is from the Virginia Central Railroad yard,out o f sight in the bo ttom, exce pt pe rhap s for Mpo ssibly the to p of a wa ter tower.

The structures on the two lots identified a s Rutherfoord on the 1835 ma p, p rime location o f the

c em ete ry, include Na ba rn, Oproba bly slave qua rters, Pa house o n Jail Alley, and on the othe r lot

Qalso a house o n Jail Alley, and Rslave qua rters. From the Jail to Ruthe rford s Row is the ma in Buria l

Ground site.

18


19/19


19

The key step is to locate the east boundary to the cemetery site. In the end only diggingwill prove the matter. If burials extended to the top of the creek bank, finding the original oldcreek bed would be a big clue and quite feasible. Earlier it was suggested that a geologistshould be able to locate the bed through core samples. Once found, the ground west of thatbed, allowing room for the high bank, might contain graves.33

To the north, from the written description of the construction of the jail, and fromexamining the 1865 photograph, in which the jail appears sunken down into the ground, it islikely that all the graves that were located on the jail lot were removed in 1830. Maps revealthat the jail lot included much of the northern part of the cemetery. Within the 2009 cemeteryparcel, which extends from the north line of Broad to the south line of Marshall, the upperhalf towards Marshall is less likely to have graves remaining.34

The odds of burials remaining in the ground of the cemetery parcel would seem to behigher to the west and to the south. The earth sides of the Broad Street ramp, early broadenedto the north as underpinning for the buildings of Rutherfoords Row, might have protectedgraves from later developments. The mostly likely place for success in an archaeological

excavation is probably in the SW corner of the parcel, as close as can be dug to the corner ofBroad and I-95. In the whole of the 2009 cemetery parcel this is where the ground is thehighest, but there you go.

FIG.17 ATTHEBURIAL GROUND SITE,NOV.2009

33 Because of the earth-moving projects 1830-35 described earlier, the creek bank closer to the creek would havebeen more likely to suffer surface removal, thus the likelihood of finding graves would increase moving westfrom the creek bed.34 Possibly a strip of the Burial Ground site below the east line of the Jail site remained unexcavated. The availableevidence is not specific enough to tell. It is hard to imagine that, given the large subtraction of earth at the jail andthe large addition of earth close by at the old creek bed, somehow the strip of old graveyard betwixt them wasundisturbedstill there is the chance that graves remain in the upper portion of the 2009 cemetery parcel.

burial ground ruggles 12-09

Documents