Central State Hospital Cemetery

S-98

This cemetery is the final resting place for thousands of patients treated at the nation's first stand-alone psychiatric hospital for African Americans, originally known as the Central Lunatic Asylum and later renamed Central State Hospital. The asylum, which became a state institution in 1870, moved here from a location near Richmond in 1885. Deceased patients were interred in this burial ground from the mid-1880s until a new cemetery opened a short distance southeast of here in 1939. In some years during this period, more than 10 percent of the hospital’s patients died. Graves were originally marked with small stones that deteriorated over time.

Department of Historic Resources, 2020

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

H. M. Hurd & W. F. Drewry, eds., The Institutional Care of the Insane in the United States and Canada (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1916.) “An Act to Establish the Central Lunatic Asylum,” Acts of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 7 June 1870. C. Barton, Central State Hospital Heritage Preservation Plan – Draft (2019) M. S. Brent, The Seventy-Sixth Annual Report (1947), 76. W. F. Drewry, Fifieth and Fifty-first Annual Reports (1921). H. C. Henry, Fifty-Third and Fifty-Fourth Annual Reports (1925). W. M. Lovenstein, W. M. Report of the Committee on Public Institutions in Regard to Central Lunatic Asylum. (Richmond: Virginia Senate, 1882).