Barton Heights Cemeteries

The Burying Ground Society of the Free People of Color of Richmond established its cemetery (later renamed Cedarwood) here in 1815. African Americans eventually founded five more cemeteries here: Union Burial Ground (later called Union Mechanics), Sons and Daughters of Ham, Ebenezer, Methodist, and Sycamore. The burial societies, fraternal orders, and religious organizations that sustained these cemeteries formed the cultural and economic bedrock of Richmond's nineteenth-century African American community. Here they gathered, especially on Whitmonday, to mourn the loss of revered figures and honor the memory of friends and family members, many of whom experienced the transition from slavery to freedom.