The following is transcribed by permission from Victorian Danville – Fifty-Two Landmarks: Their Architecture and History © 1977 Mary Cahill and Gary Grant
Green Hill Cemetery is one of the most peaceful and picturesque spots in Danville. Its handsome funeral sculpture, interspersed among large evergreens and shade trees, is typical of municipal cemeteries in the Romantic layout of the mid nineteenth century.
Often called Lee Street Cemetery, its name, though suggestive of the pleasing and tranquil names Victorians gave their burial grounds, actually came from the man who owned the land, Dr. Nathaniel T. Green.
It was Jacob Davis’s Notebook, 1855-1877 which gave the leads as to when the land was purchased. An entry dated August 11, 1863, reads, “Council of Danville, 35 acres (for burying ground) of Dr. Green’s Admr.’s. Per acre $500. Ditto for park, supposedly ___acres, per acre, $1,250.”
Minutes of the meetings of the town council from July through September 1863 reveal that Davis was accurate. On July 7, J.W. Holland, J.M. Johnston, then clerk of the council, and J.C. Voss were appointed as a committee to negotiate with Dr. Thomas D. Stokes, executor for the purchase of real estate belonging to the late Dr. Green, two acres, more or less, situated on Jefferson and Green streets at $1,250 per acre for a public park, and thirty-five acres, more or less, suitable for a cemetery, priced at $500 per acre.
Reports were made on August 4, deferred to the August 10 meeting when the committee was instructed to purchase the land, and on September 2 it was reported the land had been purchased.
The deed to the Town of Danville, dated November 15, 1863 but recorded on February 18, 1864 in the Clerk’s Office at Chatham, shows in consideration of $26,937.50, the tract bordering Lee and Jefferson streets and the Piedmont Railroad Company’s line was conveyed “as a cemetery if the party of the second part deems proper so to use it.” Two other tracts were included in the above purchase price, one of which is now Green Street Park and the other lying between Pine and Jefferson streets.
The executor of Dr. Green’s estate, Dr. Thomas D. Stokes, signed the deed as did children of Dr. Green, William S. Green, Maria E. Green, Julius C. Green, Sally Green, Berryman Green and James C. Green, the latter two by their attorney-in-fact, William S. Green. Dr. Nathaniel T. Green, according to Pollock’s Sketchbook of Danville, 1885, was a native of Halifax County who moved here at an early age and became one of the town’s most eminent physicians studying under and later practicing with the elder Dr. Patton. He also taught at Danville Male academy. He had a large family and acquired a large estate.
A map of the Green Homestead Place in the Danville Clerk’s office shows the house and appendages facing on Jefferson Street not too far from Green Hill Cemetery and included acreage now comprising large portions of Colquohoun, Paxton, Berryman, Stokes, Jefferson and Lee streets. He owned extensive land along the Piedmont Railroad, later southern, and other large tracts in the town and county.
Two of his sons became physicians, William S. Green and James C. Green. His third son, Berryman Green, was a lawyer and became a judge of the Circuit Court here. His home still stands on Paxton Avenue.
Dr. Nathaniel T. Green was born March 10, 1800 and died April 29, 1860. He is buried in Green Hill Cemetery, his remains, along with other members of his family, having been moved from the family cemetery on Paxton Street on December 9, 1910, according to Vol. 1, Burial Records, Green Hill Cemetery, Danville, Va., published by the Va.—N. C. Piedmont Genealogical Society.
Beers’ map of 1877 shows the family cemetery in the corner of lot B. Green house on Paxton Street, which later became Paxton Ave.
The town was prompted to buy land for a new cemetery because the old Grove Street Cemetery had reached its capacity. An additional factor was the deaths of so many of the Federal prisoners of war which the town housed from 1863 until the close of the Civil War, according to Lawrence McFall in the history of Green Hill for the above-mentioned publication, the northeast portion of the cemetery land became the burial ground for some 1,413 prisoners who died here in the prisons and hospitals.
On August 14, 1867, that portion of Green Hill where the prisoners were buried was taken over by the Federal Government and became the Danville National Cemetery.
Some years later, on July 19, 1873, Dr. Stokes, as executor of the Green estate, sold to the United States of America an adjacent lot facing 180 feet on Lee Street and running back along the road leading to the Freedman’s Cemetery “for use as a national cemetery.”
A stone wall surrounds the present National Cemetery, separating it from the graves in Green Hill.
Beers’ 1877 map shows Green Hill Cemetery with its present informal lay-out of carriage roads, the sexton’s house and the Freedman’s Cemetery, which was created by previous ordinances passed by town council, lying behind the United States National Cemetery.
In 1995 the Danville National Cemetery was placed on the Virginia Landmarks Register by the Virginia Board of Historic Resources.
According to Pollock, the Confederate Soldiers Monument in the cemetery was dedicated on September 3, 1878 though the fundraising by the Ladies Memorial Association and begun in June 1872. Made of Virginia granite from the quarries near Richmond and executed by Samuel Walters of that city, the monument sits on an artificial mound six feet high, and has a base of solid granite seven feet high with a shaft of twenty-five feet. It weighs sixteen tons, and cost $2,000.
On dedication day the city offices and businesses were closed and the grand parade was held beginning at Bridge Street and continuing to the cemetery. Capt. Harry Wooding, Danville’s longtime mayor, was chief marshal. The streets were decorated with festoons and flags and a special arch was built at the intersection of Main and Union streets from which waved the old war-torn flag of the Danville Blues.
Conveyances of cemetery lots were at one time recorded in the local clerk’s office. These early deeds are of particular interest for they reveal the practice of various fraternal and religious organizations purchasing lots for their membership.
One such title was placed in the name of “Trustees for the society associated and known as Zion Travelers located among the lots set apart and enclosed for the colored population of said town.”
Another deed of November 22, 1881 conveyed a plot on the west end of the cemetery near Jefferson Street to the “Trustees of Randolph Lodge No. 304 (I.O.B.B.) Independent Order of B’nai B’rith as a burial place for persons of Hebrew faith.”
A map of Green Hill dated 1880 in the city’s Engineering Department identified the road leading to the Confederate monument as Confederate Road, with indications on either side as to the Masonic section on the left and Oddfellows section on the right. The map also shows two summer houses, one near Lee Street and the other behind the monument, both of which are standing today. Along Jefferson Street the Hebrew section is shown. The walkways are identified by such names as First, Elm, Crab, Bay and Ash, but apparently this was discontinued later for the use of numerals and letters to identify them.
Most of the young men of Danville during the Civil War were serving in the 18th Virginia Infantry or Cabell’s Danville Battery, and though this cemetery was created in 1863 during the midst of this conflict, no markers can be found to indicate those who died during this period.
Many of the men buried here, however, survived the war and became Danville’s leading citizens. Their handsome mausoleums, obelisks, tablets and tombstones reflect the same ornateness as that of the architecture of their homes, some of which still enhance the city’s Historic District.
Fine carving and drapery was a specialty in the marble workers of the day and some of the funeral sculpture is in the Egyptian Revival style. According to John Maass, authority of the Gingerbread Age, Victorians considered this style particularly suitable for cemetery architecture because of the ancient Egyptians’ preoccupation with the afterlife.
Historians say that Victorians spent a great deal of time visiting graves, and their beautifully landscaped cemeteries took the place of parks which did not become into being until the late nineteenth century. Danville’s cemetery was no different, designed for a pleasant walk on a Sunday afternoon with the summer houses for visiting and resting.
Reproduced with permission from Victorian Danville – Fifty-Two Landmarks: Their Architecture and History © 1977 Mary Cahill and Gary Grant
