Quarter Place Cemetery

Quarter Place Cemetery. Patrick Henry's Red Hill. You are now standing before one of Virginia's largest plantation cemeteries for enslaved and freed African Americans. It is estimated that this site was used for burials between the 1790s and the 1930s., This cemetery shows patterns of placement, condition, and size consistent with other Black cemeteries on southern plantations. Burial sites for the enslaved were usually chosen due to their lack of agricultural potential and uneven layout, which is evident here. In 2019 Red Hill partnered with the University of Longwood's Institute of Archaeology to map and survey this cemetery. Using LiDAR technology, 147 graves were identified. Most graves are marked by a headstone and footstone, varying between two feet and seven feet in length. Additional gravesites in other areas of Quarter Place were identified as well., Matilda Pannell is the only burial with an inscribed headstone. Born in 1861 at Red Hill, she was enslaved by John Henry until the end of the Civil War in 1865. Matilda died free in 1923 and requested to be buried with her ancestors. In the summer of 2020, Red Hill began research to identify the individuals buried at the cemetery. After less than a year, 40 of the 147 individuals were identified using Patrick Henry's estate inventories and state and county death records., Acquiring this cemetery and Quarter Place as a whole allows us to integrate, in a meaningful way, the birth, life, perseverance, and resilience of those enslaved by the Henry family into the history of Red Hill and the nation's founding. Research on this project is ongoing, and it is hoped to uncover all names of those interred here as well as information about their lives and descendants., (captions) , Map of Quarter Place Cemetery with all located burials. Courtesy of Dr. Brian Bates, Longwood University., Harrison Henry pictured at Red Hill, ca. 1890. Harrison was buried here around 1906. Red Hill Collection.