Shockoe Cemetery

She died at age 61 in Florence, Italy, and received internment on June 23, 1893. Etched on the stone beneath the winged being is the word “MIZPEH.” The Hebrew word, also spelled “mizpah,” describes the view from a high place, or a memorial shrine. Both definitions suit the cemetery, situated on a bluff at Fifth and Hospital streets.Shockoe Hill is one of the city’s most historic and least known burial grounds, which for many years suffered from waning public attention and the vagaries of city budgets. Preservation organizations and, most important, after 2006, the Friends of Shockoe Hill Cemetery, drew attention for the cemetery’s protection and restoration. And now a long-needed book is in the world, by Richmond editor and writer Alyson L. Taylor-White, “Shockoe Hill Cemetery: A Richmond Landmark History."She’ll speak about her three years of research and a few of the many stories of Shockoe Hill, at 2 p.m. on Sunday, March 11, at the Bon Air Historical Society meeting at Bon Air Christian Church, 2017 Buford Road.After Taylor-White’s book signing, you can go up to the cemetery for the 3 p.m. Peter Francisco Day and a Revolutionary War Tour. Francisco came to these shores as a foundling on the docks of City Point (Hopewell) and grew up (and up, to 7 feet tall) to fight in six Revolutionary War engagements and survive the winter of Valley Forge. He became a living legend as "The American Hercules."Francisco’s tale is but one of what may be anywhere between 8,000 to 30,000 stories that slumber beneath the 12.7 acres of Shockoe Hill. Taylor-White settles on “about 27,000.”The lack of accuracy is not unusual. She explains, “You have many unmarked graves, and, difficult as it may seem to believe, not all the cemetery records are consistent with each other. It happens with every cemetery.” The number may also reflect children. “Infant mortality was appalling in the days that Shockoe was at its most active,” she says. In various sections Taylor-White recounts odd-named causes of death, and what we’d call some of them today,... (Richmond magazine (blog))