Cemetery

Cemetery. Final resting place for many who passed through Hampton's doorways. This historic cemetery is the final resting place for many who passed through Hampton's doorways. Lying among them, his grave marked by volcanic rock from his birthplace in Hawaii, is Gen. Samuel Chapman Armstrong, the founder and first principal of the school. At the foot of his grave is a quartz boulder from the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts where he went to college. Nearby is the grave of Daniel Armstrong who as born in the spring of 1893, just two months before his father's death. Also nearby is Armstrong Fire-Cloud, a Lakota Indian child who, presumably, was named in honor of the school's founder. There are several other graves of Native Americans, many of whom succumbed to tuberculosis, pneumonia and other respiratory diseases. Among them are Sioux (Lakota), Cheyenne, Mohave, Pima, Pawnee and Kiowa Indians. As Armstrong wrote in 1889, "The change from the cold bracing air of Dakota to the damp seaside air and lower altitude is a risk.", Close to Armstrong's grave is that of George Perley Phenix, who became Hampton Institute's first president in 1930. Phenix, the former director of teacher training, had long dreamed of moving the school toward college accreditation and began making steps in that direction when his life was cut short in a drowning accident. Other principals and presidents include Hollis Burke Frissell, Arthur Howe and Carl M. Hill. There are a number of teachers who rest here, as well as a physician and "the beautifier of the campus," school landscaper Leigh Richmond Miner., Armstrong, who began Hampton Institute on April 1, 1868, devoted the rest of his life to the school and wanted to be buried among the students who had died here. A tradition on campus has been to hold an annual founder's day on the Sunday closest to January 30, the day of his birth.