Cave Hill Cemetery Totally Explained

Everything about Cave Hill Cemetery totally explained

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's 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.

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.
   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. Several deceased patients from the Brown General Hospital and other nearby army medical facilities were interred in Cave Hill Cemetery.
   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 public 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's 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 "August Bloedner Monument", is separately on the National Register.

Interments

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

Irvin Abell, surgeon and American Medical Association president
Barry Bingham, Sr., owner of The Courier-Journal
Robert Worth Bingham, Ambassador to the United Kingdom and owner of The Courier-Journal
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
Roscoe Goose, jockey, winner of the 1913 Kentucky Derby
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
George D. Prentice, founder and long-time editor of the Louisville Journal, which became part of The Courier-Journal
Harry Clay Pulliam, first president of National League Baseball and responsible for hiring Honus Wagner to the Pittsburgh Pirates
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
James Breckenridge Speed, industrialist and philanthropist
Joshua Fry Speed, brother of James Speed and intimate friend of Lincoln
Henry Watterson (and his father Harvey Magee Watterson)
Enid Yandell, sculptor, Section O, Lot 396
Mia Zapata, lead singer of the underground, punk-blues band, The Gits, Section 38, Lot 82

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

William E. McAnulty, Jr., first African American to serve on the Kentucky Supreme Court

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

John Joyes, section F, Lot 25

George Weissinger Smith

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. The Confederate Flag flies over the area.

Gallery

Image:Cave Hill National Cemetery.jpg|Union Monument in Louisville Image:Cave Hill National Cemetery 2.jpg|Union Monument in Louisville Image:Cave Hill National Cemetery 3.jpg|Plaque with the Bivouac of the Dead Image:Colonel Sanders Grave 1.jpg|Harlan Sanders gravesite Image:Colonel Sanders Grave 2.jpg|Harlan Sanders marker Image:Colonel Sanders Grave 3.jpg|Harlan Sanders headstone Image:GRC Gravesite.jpg|George Rogers Clark gravestone Image:GRC Gravesite 2.jpg|George Rogers Clark gravesite Image:GRC Gravesite M1.jpg|George Rogers Clark marker Image:GRC Gravesite M2.jpg|George Rogers Clark marker Image:JamesGuthrieMonumentPlaque.jpg|James Guthrie monument plaque Image:JamesSpeedInterment.jpg|James Speed interment Image:JohnBucklinGraveNew.jpg|Replacement gravestone for Louisville's first mayor John Bucklin Image:JoshuaSpeedInterment.jpg|Joshua Fry Speed interment, along with wife Fanny Henning Speed Image:LovellRousseauMonument.jpg|Lovell Rousseau monument Image:ThomasBramletteGrave.jpg|Kentucky Governor Thomas E. Bramlette's grave Image:Union Monument Louisville.jpg|The 32nd Indiana Monument

Documents

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