Tombstone opened the “City Cemetery” in 1878. The site is the final resting place of at least 250 people. The cemetery, later called the “Old City Cemetery,” didn’t pick up its current name, “Boothill Graveyard” until about 1929, when the town first hosted Helldorado Days. Its permanent residents include three men — Billy Clanton, Frank McLaury and Tom McLaury — gunned down during the now-infamous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. By the 1920s, the cemetery was in dire need of restoration. Now restored, the cemetery is one of the city’s main tourist destinations, in part because of its sometimes humorous epitaphs.
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During the Civil War, Camp Chase, named for Salmon P. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury under President Abraham Lincoln and a former governor of Ohio, was home to a military training camp for Union troops and one of the largest Confederate prisons. The first occupants of Camp Chase’s prison were political prisoners, but during the Civil War, as many as 25,000 Confederate soldiers passed through the camp, which was built to house 3,500-4,000 prisoners. By the end of January 1865, the prison held more than 9,400 prisoners. Today, the only remnant of the camp are the graves of 2,260 Confederate soldiers, buried in quarters so tight their headstones nearly touch one another. In the middle stands a monument — with the word “Americans” engraved into its “memorial arch.”
Chattanooga National Cemetery is located near the center of the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Administered by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, it encompasses 120.9 acres and has more than 50,000 interments. The cemetery was established in 1863, by an order from Major General George Henry Thomas after the Civil War Battles of Chattanooga, as a place to inter Union soldiers who fell in combat.
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Christ Church Burial Ground at 5th and Arch Streets in Philadelphia is the final resting place for several signers of the Declaration of Independence, including Benjamin Franklin and his wife, Deborah. Other signers buried in the cemetery are Joseph Hewes, Francis Hopkinson, George Ross and Benjamin Rush. Christ Church, an Episcopal church founded in 1695 and a place of worship for many of the famous Revolutionary War participants, including George Washington, owns the cemetery. The cemetery, located across from the Visitors Center and National Constitution Center, began in 1719.
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Copp’s Hill Burying Ground in the North End of Boston was established on Feb. 20, 1659, as North Burying Ground and is the second oldest cemetery in the city. The hill is named for William Copp, a shoemaker who once owned the land. Among those buried in the graveyard is Robert Newman, the patriot who placed the lanterns in the steeple of Old North Church for Paul Revere’s midnight ride.
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Along a busy stretch of Windy Hill Road lies a 19th century cemetery, the last vestages of the antebellum residence of Asbury Hargrove. Roughly 20 people are buried in the cemetery. Hargrove was born in 1809 and died in 1879. Between July 6-15, 1864, Brig. Gen. Edward M. McCook used the residence as his headquarters.
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Highland Cemetery was established in 1908 and is the final resting place of many early Okemah, Oklahoma, leaders. It also contains the family burial plot of the family of legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie. Although he is not buried here, a cenotaph is located in Highland Cemetery in his honor. Guthrie’s mother, Nora Belle Sherman Guthrie, and father, Charley Guthrie, are buried here, as is his sister, Clara Edna Guthrie, brother, Lee Roy Guthrie, and one of his sons, Bill Roger Guthrie.
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Also known as New Oak Cliff Cemetery, Laurel Land Memorial Park is famous as the final resting place for musician Stevie Ray Vaughan and J.D. Tippit, a Dallas police officer Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly killed after he allegedly killed President John F. Kennedy.
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The Marietta City Cemetery, adjacent to Marietta Confederate Cemetery, was established in the 1830s. The city cemetery is the final resting place to a number of the city’s prominent denizens, including S.V. Sanford, the namesake for the University of Georgia’s football stadium. It is also where 13-year-old Mary Phagan was buried after she was killed April 26, 1913.
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As the Civil War dragged on, wounded soldiers from the battles that ravaged North Georgia were taken to Marietta to be buried. That continued until Gen. William T. Sherman took control of the city on July 2, 1864. Following the war, Henry Greene Cole, a Marietta businessman and Unionist, offered land to build a cemetery for both Union and Confederate soldiers, but many city residents wouldn’t entertain the proposal of burying battlefield enemies in the same graveyard. So, in 1867, Jane Glover officially gave the land to a memorial association to create the cemetery for Confederate soldiers. Union troops who were killed throughout North Georgia were re-buried in the nearby Marietta National Cemetery. In addition to the more than 3,000 grave sites, the cemetery is home to a number of monuments, including a six-pound cannon that Union troops captured near Savannah. The cannon resided at the Georgia Military Institute for a number of years.
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Mount Moriah Cemetery, established in 1878 in Deadwood, South Dakota, is the final resting place of several famous Wild West figures, including Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane and Seth Bullock. Some bodies initially buried in Ingelside Cemetery, another cemetery in Deadwood, were relocated to Mount Moriah Cemetery in the 1880s. The cemetery, which sits on a plateau overlooking Deadwood Gulch, has several sections, including a Jewish section and a Potter’s field.
New Hope Cemetery in the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody dates to 1859, though the first known burial dates to May 1887. Many no doubt overlook the cemetery as it is overshadowed by modern developments and urban sprawl. The cemetery is the final resting place for more than 350 people. It was once part of New Hope Presbyterian Church. The last burial in the cemetery was 2014.
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Ebenezer Methodist Church (now Sam Jones Memorial United Methodist Church) founded Oak Hill Cemetery in 1838. Famous burials include Uriah Stephens, the switch master in Kingston during the Civil War; Pleasant Stovall Shelman, the operator of a Cartersville hotel; and Sam Jones, a famous preacher.
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Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois, is famous as the final resting place of President Abraham Lincoln, his wife and all but one of his children. Lincoln’s Tomb, Oak Ridge, the third and now only public cemetery in Springfield, is the second-most visited cemetery in the United States, after Arlington National Cemetery. William Saunders designed the cemetery as part of the Rural Cemetery Landscape Lawn Style. The location was selected, in part, because of the rolling hills.
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Oakland Cemetery was founded in 1850. Among the famous people buried in the cemetery are Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone With the Wind; Bobby Jones, one of the best golfers to ever play; and William A. Fuller, the conductor who successfully pursued Union spies during the Civil War’s Great Locomotive Chase.
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The Old Colonial Cemetery of Metuchen was founded during the first half of the 18th century, likely between 1715 and 1730. The grave of John Campbell, who died in 1731, is the oldest in the cemetery. Among those buried in the cemetery are 66 veterans of the American Revolution.
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Pioneer Park Cemetery consists of graveyards containing the remains of several of the Dallas’ earliest founders, including mayors, business leaders and heroes of the Texas revolution. Located in the Dallas’ Convention Center District and east of Pioneer Plaza, the cemetery dates to the 1850s and remained in use until the 1920s.
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Shannon Rose Hill Memorial Park is famous as the final resting place of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who allegedly killed President John F. Kennedy. Oswald, 24 years old at the time of his death, ended up here because no other funeral home wanted his body. Within months of his burial, thousands of visitors stopped by his grave to catch a glimpse of the final resting place of the alleged presidential assassin.
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According to various sources, Smyrna Methodist Church founded the Smyrna Memorial Cemetery in 1838 near what is today the intersection of Memorial Place and Atlanta Road in the heart of the city. The 170-year-old cemetery lies in the shadows of Smyrna Market Village. The cemetery is home to a number of notable denizens of Smyrna over the years, including John Moore, who served the first mayor of Smyrna when the city was incorporated on Aug. 23, 1872. There are a total of 638 people buried in Smyrna Memorial Cemetery, but only about 238 graves are marked with headstones. The grave of Elijah Fleming, who died on April 8, 1848, is the earliest marked grave in the cemetery. The grave of his daughter, Mary, who died on March 14, 1858, at the age of 17, is the second oldest marked grave in the cemetery. A 1999 archaeological survey located 395 graves that were previously lost to history.
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