CAVE HILL CEMETERY

'Cave Hill Cemetery' is a 296-acre Victorian era National Cemetery and arboretum located at 701 Baxter Avenue, Louisville, Kentucky. It is open daily to the public from 8:00 AM to 4:45 PM (weather permitting). Its main entrance is on Baxter Avenue and there is a secondary one on Grinstead Drive. Both former Louisville mayors for whom these streets are named (James F. Grinstead and John G Baxter), are buried in Cave Hill Cemetery. It is the largest cemetery by area and number of burials in Louisville.
Cave Hill was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Cave Hill National Cemetery, containing military graves, is also on the National Register, added in 1998.

Contents

History

Buildings and grounds

Interments

Gallery

Documents

Notes

References

See also

External links

History

Cave Hill was chartered in 1848 on what was William Johnston's Cave Hill Farm, then a rural property some distance east of Louisville. Johnston, who died in 1798, had built the first brick house in Louisville on the grounds circa 1788. City officials had purchased part of the land in the 1830s in anticipation of building a railroad through it, and a workhouse was built there. The railroad was built elsewhere, and the land was leased to local farmers.
In 1846, Mayor Frederick A. Kaye began investigating the possibility of developing a garden-style cemetery on the grounds, a popular concept at the time. Hartford, Connecticut civil engineer Edmund Francis Lee was hired, who planned a cemetery with winding paths, graves across the tops of hills, and lakes and ponds in the valleys. The Cave Hill Cemetery Co. was chartered in February 1848, and the cemetery was dedicated on July 25, 1848. Before the era of large municipal parks, it was common for cities to promote a garden cemetery as a green oasis and recreation destination, and Louisville was no exception. This largely ended with the opening of Cherokee Park in 1892.^[1]
After administrators sold several acres of land for the burial of Union soldiers during the Civil War, local Confederate supporters purchased nearby land as well.
Johnston's farmhouse (in what is now sections 33 and 34) was converted to the city's pesthouse, and was demolished in 1872. Also in 1872, Beechhurst Sanitarium was built near the pesthouse and the modern Grinstead entrance entrance. Beechurst was torn down in 1936.
The grounds were expanded and remapped in 1888 to their modern size of nearly 300 acres. In the 1980s razor wire was added to the brick walls surrounding Cave Hill to keep out after-hours visitors.

Buildings and grounds

The signature Baxter Avenue entrance was completed in 1892. The Corinthian-style building includes a 2,000 pound bell in its clock tower. The tower, once the tallest structure for miles, was frequently hit by lightning and last renovated in 2001. The Grinstead Drive entrance was built in 1913.
There is a third pubic entrance on the residential street of Dearing Court. It was closed as of 2007. Another public entrance, also no longer in use, was built off Payne Street in 1910, closest to the military sections. There are several service entrances around the perimeter. Other buildings include the stone office building near the lake, and the Rustic Shelter House built in 1892 at a cost of $565.
The middle fork of Beargrass Creek runs through Cave Hill, and a source stream flowing into the creek roughly divides the cemetery in new (eastern) and old (western) sections. That stream flows from a spring near the cave that gave the property its name. The cave can be entered for about 30 feet, and then there is a marginal amount of crawl space beyond that, however the cave is officially off limits. There are also five man-made lakes.
The cemetery currently features more than 500 species of trees and shrubs, and contains monuments and graves of three Union generals. The 32nd Indiana Monument, also known as the "Union Monument in Louisville", is separately on the National Register.

Interments

There were about 120,000 people interred by 2002, with space remaining for 22,000 more graves.

★ J. Graham Brown, builder of the Brown Hotel

★ John Breckinridge Castleman, military leader and businessman

★ George Rogers Clark (Revolutionary War leader), Section P, lot 245

★ Meriwether Lewis Clark, Jr. (founder of the Kentucky Derby) Section A, lot 699

★ Norris Embry, 20th century Expressionist painter

★ Harold Philip Hamilton, soldier, educator and college president

★ Hugh Haynie, political cartoonist

★ Patty Smith Hill (composer of "Happy Birthday to You") Section G, lot 96

★ Matthew Harris Jouett (painter) reinterred in 1893 to Section c, lot 30

★ George Keats (brother of poet John Keats) reinterred 1879, Section O lot 73

★ Nicola Marschall, artist who designed the flag and military uniforms of the former CSA.

★ Wayne Oates, psychologist

★ Alice Hegan Rice (author) Section Q, lot 107

★ Lovell Rousseau, Union Civil War general (monument only; actually buried in Arlington National Cemetery)

★ Harland Sanders ("Colonel Sanders") Section 33, lot 57. According to the cemetery, this is the most visited grave at Cave Hill. It features a bust designed by Sanders' daughter in 1973.

★ Derek Smith (basketball)

★ James Speed, lawyer and U.S. Attorney General under Abraham Lincoln, Section P, lot 681

★ Joshua Fry Speed, brother of James Speed and intimate friend of Lincoln

★ James Breckenridge Speed, industrialist and philanthropist

★ Henry Watterson (and his father Harvey Magee Watterson)

★ Enid Yandell (sculptor), Section O, Lot 396

★ George D. Prentice founder and long-time editor of the ''Louisville Journal'', which became part of ''The Courier-Journal''

★ Mia Zapata, lead singer of the underground, punk-blues band, The Gits, Section 38, Lot 82

★ Irvin Abell, surgeon and American Medical Association president

★ Robert Worth Bingham, Ambassador to the United Kingdom and owner of ''The Courier-Journal''

★ Barry Bingham, Sr., owner of ''The Courier-Journal''
;'Politicians'


★ Richard Clough Anderson, Jr., (1788-1826) member and Speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives; Member of U.S. House from Kentucky; U.S. Minister to Gran Colombia; namesake of Anderson County, Kentucky

★ Thomas E. Bramlette, Governor of Kentucky during the Civil War

★ James Biddle Eustis, Louisiana Senator

★ James Guthrie, 19th century U.S. Senator and Secretary of the Treasury; president of Louisville and Nashville Railroad, Louisville and Portland Canal Company and the University of Louisville

★ Thomas Alexander Harris, Representative from Missouri in the Confederate Congress

★ John McKinley, former member of the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives and Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court

★ Richard Hickman Menefee, member of the U. S. House; namesake of Menifee County, Kentucky

★ David Meriwether, member of both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate from Kentucky; Governor of New Mexico territory

★ Thruston Ballard Morton, Served in both houses of Congress

★ Frederic Mosley Sackett, Senator and Ambassador to Germany

★ Augustus E. Willson, Governor of Kentucky
;'Louisville Mayors'


★ John G. Baxter (after whom Baxter Avenue is named)

★ John Barbee

★ David L. Beatty

★ Andrew Broaddus

★ John Bucklin reinterred in 1856 to Section M, lot 346

★ William O. Cowger

★ John M. Delph

★ Charles R. Farnsley

★ Charles F. Grainger

★ James F. Grinstead

★ William B. Harrison

★ William O. Head

★ Bruce Hoblitzell

★ John Joyes section F, Lot 25

★ Frederick A. Kaye

★ Robert Emmet King

★ James S. Lithgow

★ William L. Lyons

★ Neville Miller

★ Joseph T. O'Neal

★ P. Booker Reed

★ Joseph D. Scholtz

★ George Weissinger Smith

★ E. Leland Taylor

★ Henry S. Tyler

★ Charles P. Weaver

★ Arthur A. Will

★ Wilson W. Wyatt Section 33, Lot 13
;'Confederate soldiers'
More than 200 Confederate soldiers are buried in Section "O" of the cemetery, with 30-40 buried in a row in the National Cemetery. The original wooden markers in Section "O" were replaced with stone markers in 1880-1881. A number of markers are marked as unknown. Included in the Section "O" burials is a Confederate Brigadier General, Alpheus Baker. There are two other Confederate generals buried in other locations in the cemetery. In the addition to Section "O" (lot 267 1/2) are a number of residents of the Kentucky Confederate Home, who died after the war around the turn of the century.

Gallery

Documents

Notes

1. Living History: The Physical City as Artifact and Teaching Tool, Goldfield, David R., , , The History Teacher, 1975

References

★ Thomas, Samuel W., ''Cave Hill Cemetery: A Pictorial Guide and Its History'', Cave Hill Cemetery Company, Louisville, Kentucky 1985

★ The Political Graveyard (Jefferson County, Kentucky)

See also

★ History of Louisville, Kentucky

★ List of attractions and events in Louisville, Kentucky

★ List of botanical gardens in the United States

★ List of mayors of Louisville, Kentucky

★ Louisville in the American Civil War

External links

★ Cemetery website

★ Map of the Cemetery

★ Photos of selected graves with GPS coordinates

★ Confederate Burials

★ Confederate Burials in the Cave Hill National Cemetery