Mount Olivet Cemetery is a 206-acre (83 ha) cemetery located in Nashville, Tennessee. It is located approximately two miles East of Downtown Nashville, and adjacent to the Catholic Calvary Cemetery. It is open to the public during daylight hours.
Video Mount Olivet Cemetery (Nashville)
History
Antebellum Era
The Mount Olivet Cemetery was established by Adrian Van Sinderen Lindsley and John Buddeke in 1856. It was modelled after the Mount Auburn Cemetery. In the 1870s, a chapel designed in the Gothic Revival architectural style by Hugh Cathcart Thompson was built as an office.
The Southern aristocracy was buried in a separate section from common folks. These included planters as well as former governors of Tennessee, U.S. Senators, and U.S. Congressional Representatives. In the Antebellum era, slaves were often buried with their owners.
Visitors to Nashville were buried alongside paupers.
Confederate circle
After the American Civil War, "the Ladies Memorial Society of Nashville with surviving Confederate veterans such as William B. Bate, Daniel Carter, General Benjamin Cheatham, and Thomas Harding purchased 26, 588 square feet in the center of Mount Olivet and established Confederate Circle" for the interment of Confederate dead. It was used for the interment of Confederate soldiers who had died on nearby battlegrounds and as a memorial to their sacrifice. Women organized such memorial associations and raised money for interment of Confederate soldiers in major cities across the South and areas where there were concentrations of bodies. The memorial association arranged for burials of about 1,500 soldiers at Confederate Circle. They also built an obelisk.
World War I and beyond
A plaque in memory of Nashvillians who died in World War I was dedicated by General Hugh Mott in 1924.
The cemetery was purchased by Stewart Enterprises in 1994.
In 2015, the chapel, by then listed on the National Register of Historic Places, burned.
Maps Mount Olivet Cemetery (Nashville)
Notable burials
- Adelicia Acklen, plantation and slave owner.
- John Meredith Bass, Mayor of Nashville from 1833 to 1834, and again in 1869.
- William B. Bate, Governor of Tennessee (1883 to 1887), American Civil War general.
- John Bell, United States Senator and presidential candidate
- Aaron V. Brown, Governor of Tennessee (1845 to 1847), United States Postmaster General from 1857 to 1859
- James Stephens Brown, Mayor of Nashville from 1908 to 1909.
- Lytle Brown, major general in the U.S. Army.
- George P. Buell, Union Army general
- Joseph Wellington Byrns, United States Congressman and Speaker of the House
- John Catron, U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
- Benjamin F. ("Frank") Cheatham, Confederate general during the American Civil War.
- Mark R. Cockrill (1788-1872), cattleman, planter, and "Wool King of the World".
- Clarence Kelley Colley (1869-1956), architect.
- Washington Bogart Cooper (1802-1888), painter.
- George A. Dickel (1818-1894), liquor dealer and wholesaler
- Anne Dallas Dudley (1876-1955), women's suffrage activist.
- Guilford Dudley, U.S. ambassador to Denmark under the Nixon and Ford presidential administrations.
- Edward H. East (1830-1904), Tennessee Secretary of State, briefly served as the state's "acting governor" in 1865
- Joseph Thorpe Elliston (1779-1856), silversmith, owner of the Burlington plantation, fourth mayor of Nashville from 1814 to 1817.
- Jesse Babcock Ferguson, onetime minister of the Nashville Church of Christ, later associated with Spiritualism and Universalism
- Thomas Frist, co-founder of Hospital Corporation of America and father of the former majority leader of the U.S. Senate, Bill Frist
- Francis Furman (1816-1899), Nashville businessman during the Reconstruction Era. His tomb, designed by sculptor Johannes Gelert (1852-1923), is the largest one in Mount Olivet Cemetery.
- Sidney Clarence Garrison (1885-1945), second President of Peabody College (now part of Vanderbilt University) from 1938 to 1945.
- Meredith Poindexter Gentry, United States Congressman
- Carl Giers, early photographer
- Alvan Cullem Gillem, Civil War Union general and post-bellum Indian fighter
- Vern Gosdin 1934-2009 country music legend
- William Crane Gray, (1835-1919), First Episcopal Bishop of the Missionary Jurisdiction of Southern Florida
- Felix Grundy (1775-1840), U.S. Senator from Tennessee and 13th Attorney General of the United States.
- George Blackmore Guild (1834-1917), Mayor of Nashville from 1891 to 1895.
- Robert Kennon Hargrove (1829-1905), a Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South
- Henry C. Hibbs (1882-1949), architect.
- E. Bronson Ingram, founder of Ingram Industries Inc., parent company of Ingram Barge Company; Ingram Book Company, the nation's largest book distributor; Ingram Micro; and other major companies
- Howell Edmunds Jackson, United States Senator and Supreme Court Justice
- William Hicks Jackson, Confederate general during the American Civil War
- Thomas A. Kercheval, Tennessee State Senator and Mayor of Nashville
- Eugene C. Lewis, engineer, chairman of the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis, civic leader.
- David Lipscomb, founder of Nashville Bible School (now Lipscomb University).
- William Litterer (1834-1917), Mayor of Nashville from 1890 to 1891.
- George Maney, Confederate Civil War general and U.S. Ambassador to Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay
- Jack C. Massey, co-founder of Hospital Corporation of America and owner of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
- Hill McAlister, Governor of Tennessee from 1933 to 1937
- Randal William McGavock (1826-1863), Mayor of Nashville from 1858 to 1859 and Confederate Lt. Colonel who was killed in the Battle of Raymond.
- Eliza Jane McKissack (1828-1900), founding head of music in 1890 to the forerunner of the University of North Texas College of Music
- Benton McMillin, Governor of Tennessee (1899 to 1903)
- Kindred Jenkins Morris (1819-1884), Mayor of Nashville from 1869 to 1871.
- Thomas Owen Morris (1845-1924), Mayor of Nashville from 1906 to 1908.
- John W. Morton, Confederate veteran, founder of the Nashville chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, Tennessee Secretary of State from 1901 to 1909.
- William Nichol (1800-1878), Mayor of Nashville from 1835 to 1837.
- John Overton, friend of Andrew Jackson and one of the founders of Memphis, Tennessee.
- Bruce Ryburn Payne (1874-1937), founding president of Peabody College (now part of Vanderbilt University) from 1911 to 1937.
- Colonel Buckner H. Payne (1799-1889), clergyman, publisher, merchant and racist pamphleteer.
- Fountain E. Pitts (1808-1874), Methodist minister, Confederate chaplain and colonel, first pastor of the West End United Methodist Church in Nashville.
- James E. Rains, American Civil War general killed in the 1862 Battle of Murfreesboro
- Fred Rose, music publishing executive.
- William Percy Sharpe (1871-1942), Mayor of Nashville from 1922 to 1924.
- John Hugh Smith (1819-1870), Mayor of Nashville, Tennessee three times, from 1845 to 1846, from 1850 to 1853, and from 1862 to 1865.
- Donald W. Southgate (1887-1953), architect
- Edward Bushrod Stahlman (1843-1930), German-born railroad executive, publisher of the Nashville Banner and builder of The Stahlman.
- Ernest Stoneman, country music performer
- Wilbur Fisk Tillett (1854-1936), Methodist clergyman and educator; dean of Vanderbilt's theology school
- George D. Waller (1883-1969), architect.
- George Dury (1817-1894), Portrait painter.
- David K. Wilson (1919-2007), businessman and philanthropist; major donor to Vanderbilt University and the Republican Party.
- Sarah Polk Fall (1847-1924) Nashville socialite and unofficially adopted daughter to former first Lady Sarah Polk.
See also
- Greenwood Cemetery
References
Further reading
- Willis, Ridley, II (1993). A Walking Tour of Mt. Olivet Cemetery. Nashville, Tennessee: The Cemetery. OCLC 29231889.
External links
- Civil War Trails
Source of article : Wikipedia
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