Shockoe Hill Cemetery

Shockoe Hill Cemetery (the first owned and maintained by the city of Richmond) opened in 1822. It was one of three cemeteries on Richmond’s northern edge, including the Hebrew Cemetery and a free-black and slave burial ground. Shockoe Hill was for several decades the favored cemetery for Richmond’s elite, especially after the interment of Chief Justice John Marshall in 1835., Between 1861 and 1864, General Hospital No. 1, the Alms House Hospital, was located in the imposing brick city poorhouse (built in 1860) just north of here. The cemetery became many Confederate soldiers’ last resting place, especially those who died at the hospital. Near the end of the war, the building served as the Virginia Military Institute Corps of Cadets barracks. Cadets too young to march away watched from upper-story windows as Richmond burned on April 2-3, 1865., All Southern states (except Arkansas) are represented here by soldiers killed in battle. Including both wartime casualties and veterans, about 500 Confederate soldiers rest at Shockoe Hill. Prominent among them are Irish-born Gen. Patrick Theodore Moore, who survived a severe head wound to command local defense troops late in the war, and Dr. Charles Bell Gibson, a leading surgeon who supervised the Alms House Hospital. Fourteen of the dozens of girls and young women killed in the March 13, 1863, explosion at the Confederates States Laboratory on Brown’s Island are also here. Not all of the Cemetery’s occupants were loyal Confederates, however. Many noted Unionists are here, including spymaster Elizabeth Van Lew, former Congressman John Minor Botts, and others who remained loyal to “the old flag.”, Dr. Gibson treated Union prisoners of war here at the Alms House Hospital, despite loud objections from Confederate politicians and newspapers. At least 500 were buried just outside the east Cemetery wall. They were disinterred after war and reburied at Richmond National Cemetery., Elizabeth Van Lew, from a leading Richmond family, was an anti-slavery Unionist who built an extensive spy network, sent valuable information to Union commanders, and helped Federal soldiers escape imprisonment. Many Richmonders shunned her after the war, but she was proud that Gen Ulysses S. Grant considered her the Union’s most valuable resources in the wartime capital., (captions) , (upper left) Alms House and cemetery - Courtesy Library of Congress , (lower center) Gen. Patrick T. Moore, from The Photographic History of the Civil War, Vol. 10 (1910) , (upper right) “Prisoners of War at the General hospital” Courtesy Daughters of Charity, Province of St. Louise, St. Louis, Missouri , (lower right) Elizabeth Van Lew Courtesy Library of Congress