Nashville's 1822 Public Burial Ground and Old Glory's Resting Place
1001 4th Avenue South, Nashville, TN 37210
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public access during daylight hours; the Nashville City Cemetery Association hosts seasonal living-history events.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Mostly flat with paved central paths; older sections have uneven ground
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1822 · NRHP Listed · Oldest Public Cemetery in Nashville · Old Glory Captain William Driver Burial · Original Fisk Jubilee Singers Burials · Four Confederate Generals
On March 9, 1820, the mayor and aldermen of Nashville purchased four acres on the plains south of town for a new public burial ground. The previous public cemetery at Sulphur Springs Bottom, near the present-day Tennessee State Capitol, had been plagued by repeated flooding from the Cumberland River. Mayor Thomas Crutches and the aldermen selected the more elevated terrain below St. Cloud Hill. Captain Alpha Kingsley, an early Nashville innkeeper, designed the cemetery layout. Nashville City Cemetery opened on January 1, 1822.
Over the first three decades the cemetery received both new burials and reinterments from earlier private and church grounds. By 1850 the cemetery held more than 11,000 burials representing every Nashville community of the era. The Civil War sharply increased the burial rate. Across more than 200 years of operation, Nashville City Cemetery has accumulated approximately 20,000 burials.
Notable interments include four of Nashville's founders: James Robertson and his wife Charlotte, and John Cockrill and his wife Ann Robertson Cockrill. American Revolutionary War veterans Lipscomb Norvell, Joel Lewis, and Anthony Foster are buried at the cemetery. Civil War-era burials include four Confederate generals: Felix Zollicoffer, Bushrod Johnson, Richard Stoddert Ewell, and Samuel Read Anderson; and Union Navy Commodore Paul Shirley. Tennessee Governor William Carroll, fifteen Nashville mayors, and Captain William Driver — the merchant sea captain who named the American flag Old Glory — are also interred at the cemetery.
The cemetery holds the burials of two of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers, Mabel Lewis Imes and Ella Sheppard Moore. The Fisk Jubilee Singers, formed at Fisk University in 1871, were one of the most consequential 19th-century American musical ensembles, introducing African American spiritual music to international audiences.
The cemetery was officially closed to new burials in 1878 except for already-purchased family plots. Today it is administered by the Nashville City Cemetery Association in partnership with the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County. The site is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Sources
Nashville City Cemetery's paranormal tradition is shaped by the cemetery's exceptional historical density and by the Nashville City Cemetery Association's curatorial culture, which prefers archival history to ghost-tour promotion.
Reports from the Confederate generals' section include the sound of distant drumming on still summer evenings, fragments of conversation interpreted as military commands, and on occasion the figure of a man in 19th-century uniform observed near the Zollicoffer plot. Felix Zollicoffer was killed at the Battle of Mill Springs in January 1862 and was the first Confederate general to die in the Western Theater.
Captain William Driver's grave attracts a different cluster of reports. Driver was a heavy cigar smoker; visitors near his grave occasionally report the scent of tobacco when no one else is on the grounds. His grave is consistently marked with a small American flag, in keeping with the Old Glory tradition.
The older eastern sections produce reports of a woman in 19th-century mourning attire observed kneeling at a grave. The figure has been variously identified by witnesses; no consistent named-entity attribution has emerged.
The Nashville City Cemetery Association does not promote the site as paranormally active. Its principal interpretive programming is the annual Living History Tour, in which costumed re-enactors portray documented Nashville residents at their grave sites. Modern paranormal investigation of the cemetery has been limited and informal.
Notable Entities
Walk the oldest extant public cemetery in Nashville, founded in 1822, with over 20,000 interments including four of Nashville's founders, Tennessee Governor William Carroll, Captain William Driver who named the American flag Old Glory, and two original Fisk Jubilee Singers.
Nashville City Cemetery Association presents seasonal living-history events including the Tales from the Crypt event each fall, in which costumed re-enactors portray notable Nashvillians at their grave sites.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Frederick, MD
Mount Olivet Cemetery was established in 1852 as Frederick's garden cemetery, replacing crowded church burial grounds in town. It is the burial place of Francis Scott Key (author of 'The Star-Spangled Banner'), Barbara Fritchie, Maryland's first governor Thomas Johnson, and 408 unknown Confederate soldiers reinterred from area battlefields. The Key monument was dedicated in 1898 and the Confederate monument in 1881.
Asheville, NC
Riverside Cemetery was founded on August 4, 1885 by the Asheville Cemetery Company as a garden-style burial ground in the Montford neighborhood. The 87-acre site contains more than 13,000 burials including writers Thomas Wolfe and O. Henry, and sits near the location of the 1865 Battle of Asheville. The City of Asheville has owned and operated the cemetery since 1952.
Syracuse, NY
Woodlawn Cemetery Association was incorporated in April 1881 to provide a picturesque burial ground for the growing city of Syracuse. The non-denominational, non-profit cemetery spans roughly 160 acres on Grant Boulevard on the city's north side and includes a Civil War memorial section honoring more than 100 soldiers interred there, along with a Sunset Mausoleum Complex for above-ground entombment.