National Park Service spotlights Barton Heights
A new National Park Service website spotlights Richmond as a historic destination, and includes detailed profiles of a number of North Richmond neighborhoods — including the Barton Heights community. Here’s a snippet; visit the site for more:
Barton Heights Cemeteries are six contiguous burial grounds that African American churches and fraternal organizations established beginning in 1815. The six cemeteries are Cedarwood (originally Phoenix Cemetery), Union Mechanics (formerly Union Burial Ground), Methodist, Ebenezer, Sons and Daughters of Ham, and Sycamore. Together they are important reflections of what African Americans achieved in establishing cemeteries for their own. Burial societies helped establish the cemeteries offering death benefits, the most basic of insurance. These burial societies were the precursors of the benevolent organizations and fraternal orders and the black insurance companies of the later 19th and early 20th centuries. The Barton Heights Cemeteries are the final resting place of prominent African Americans in the city.
I attended the dedication of the National Park Service dedication of the marker commemorating the Barton Heights Cemeteries in 1998, and was one of the speakers representing the now defunct A.D. Price Funeral Home. I am perhaps the last licensed mortician who actually worked with A.D.Price Jr, having served my internship under him.This funeral home laid to rest many prominent African Americans in these cemeteries. I had the distinct opportunity to talk with many of the funeral directors who served (later interments) in theses hallowed grounds.