Rock Creek Cemetery

Rock Creek Cemetery
Rock Creek Cemetery in September 2008
Rock Creek Cemetery is located in the District of Columbia
Rock Creek Cemetery
Rock Creek Cemetery is located in the United States
Rock Creek Cemetery
LocationWebster Street and Rock Creek Church Road, NW, Washington, D.C., U.S.
Coordinates38°56′52″N 77°0′47″W / 38.94778°N 77.01306°W / 38.94778; -77.01306
Area84.2 acres (34.1 ha)
Built1719
Architectural styleGothic Revival
NRHP reference No.77001498[1]
Added to NRHPAugust 12, 1977

Rock Creek Cemetery is an 86-acre (350,000 m2) cemetery with a natural and rolling landscape located at Rock Creek Church Road, NW, and Webster Street, NW, off Hawaii Avenue, NE, in the Petworth neighborhood of Washington, D.C., across the street from the historic Soldiers' Home and the Soldiers' Home Cemetery. It also is home to the InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington.

On August 12, 1977, Rock Creek Cemetery and the adjacent church grounds were listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Rock Creek Church Yard and Cemetery.

History

Adams Memorial, designed by sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens as a gravestone for Marian Hooper Adams, a Washington, D.C. socialite who committed suicide in 1885. A replica sits in the National Portrait Gallery.
The mausoleum's interior at Rock Creek Cemetery

The cemetery was first established in 1719 in the British colonial Province of Maryland as a churchyard within the glebe of St. Paul's Episcopal Church within the Rock Creek Parish. Later, the vestry decided to expand the burial ground as a public cemetery to serve the city of Washington, D.C., which had acquired the cemetery within its boundaries as established in 1791. The cemetery was formally recognized and established through an Act of Congress in 1840.

An expanded cemetery was landscaped in the rural garden style, to function as both a cemetery and a public park. It is a ministry of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Rock Creek Parish, with sections for St. John's Russian Orthodox Church and St. Nicholas Orthodox Cathedral.

The park-like setting of Rock Creek Cemetery has several notable mausoleums, sculptures, and tombstones. The best known is the Adams Memorial, a contemplative, androgynous bronze sculpture seated before a block of granite that was created by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Stanford White. It marks the graves of Marian Hooper Adams and her husband, Henry Adams, and sometimes, mistakenly, the sculpture is referred to as Grief.[2][3] Saint-Gaudens entitled it The Mystery of the Hereafter and The Peace of God that Passeth Understanding.

Other notable memorials include the Frederick Keep Monument, the Heurich Mausoleum, the Hitt Monument, the Hardon Monument, the Kauffman Monument that is known as The Seven Ages of Memory, the Sherwood Mausoleum Door, and the Thompson-Harding Monument.[4]

Sculptors of works in the cemetery

Numerous fine works by unknown sculptors also exist in the cemetery.[5][6][7]

Notable interments

A

  • Cleveland Abbe (1838–1916), prominent meteorologist
  • John James Abert (1788–1863), chief of the Corps of Topographical Engineers
  • Henry Adams (1838–1918), writer, descendant of two U.S. presidents; grave is marked by the Adams Memorial
  • Clover Hooper Adams (1843–1885), Washington hostess and accomplished amateur photographer, wife of Henry Adams; grave is marked by the Adams Memorial
  • Alice Warfield Allen (1869–1929), mother of the Duchess of Windsor, Wallis Simpson
  • Doug Allison (1846–1916), baseball player
  • Thomas H. Anderson (1848–1916), associate judge of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia[8]
  • Frank Crawford Armstrong (1835–1909), Confederate general
  • Timothy P. Andrews (1794–1868), Union Army general and paymaster-general of the United States Army (1862–1864)
  • James B. Aswell (1869–1931), educator and member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1913 to 1931

B

Gravesite of inventor Emile Berliner and his family members

C

  • Camille Chautemps (1885–1963), prime minister of France
  • Edward Clark (1822–1902), Architect of the Capitol
  • Catherine Cate Coblentz (1897–1951), writer, wife of William Coblentz
  • William Coblentz (1873–1962), physicist, notable for pioneer contributions to infrared radiometry and spectroscopy
  • Martin F. Conway (1827–1882), U.S. congressman from Kansas and consul to France[12]
  • William Eleroy Curtis (1850–1911), journalist, diplomat, and advocate of Pan-Americanism

D

  • Evelyn Y. Davis, (1929–2018), American activist shareholder.[13]
  • S. Wallace Dempsey (1862–1949), Republican politician
  • Hubert Dilger (1836–1911), American Civil War artillerist, captain in the Union Army, Medal of Honor recipient
  • J. Maury Dove (1855–1924), business executive and hotelier[14]
  • Gerald A. Drew (1903–1970), United States ambassador to Haiti and Bolivia
  • Roscoe Drummond (1902–1983), journalist and editor[15]
  • Amanda Ruter Dufour (1822–1899), poet

E

  • Susan Ann Edson (1823–1897), personal physician to President James A. Garfield[16]
  • Henry Jackson Ellicott (1847–1901), sculptor and architectural sculptor[17]
  • Matthew Gault Emery (1818–1901), mayor of Washington, D.C., from 1870 to 1871
  • Henry Ellsworth Ewing (1883–1951), arachnologist[18]

F

  • Charles S. Fairfax (1829–1869), Virginia-born California politician who was entitled to the British title 10th Lord Fairfax of Cameron
  • Stephen Johnson Field (1816–1899), Associate justice of US Supreme Court
  • Peter Force (1790–1868), politician, U.S. Army lieutenant in the War of 1812, newspaper editor, archivist, and historian, who served as the twelfth mayor of Washington, D.C., and whose library of historical documents became the first major Americana collection of the Library of Congress
  • Israel Moore Foster (1873–1950), Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives
  • William H. French (1815–1881), major general during the American Civil War and the Mexican War

G

Gravesite of Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor, an editor of National Geographic
  • Julius Garfinckel (1872–1936), merchant, founder of Washington department store, Garfinckel's
  • Harry Post Godwin (1857–1900) Chief Editor of the National Republican, Washington Star
  • Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor (1875–1966), president of the National Geographic Society, Hubbard Bell Grossman Pillot Memorial

H

  • Mary Berri Chapman Hansbrough (1872–1951), poet and painter
  • John Marshall Harlan (1833–1911), Supreme Court associate justice, known as the "Great Dissenter"; wrote the lone dissenting opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson
  • Patricia Roberts Harris (1924–1985), ambassador, first African-American woman to serve in a presidential cabinet
  • George L. Harrison (1887–1958), banker, insurance executive, and political advisor during World War II
  • Patricia McMahon Hawkins (1949–2021), diplomat
  • Frank Hatton (1846–1894), U.S. postmaster general and editor of the Washington Post
  • Christian Heurich (1842–1945), German-born American founder of Heurich Brewery (1871–1954)
  • Samuel Billingsley Hill (1875–1958), U.S. representative from Washington and member of the United States Board of Tax Appeals (now the United States Tax Court)
  • Lemon G. Hine (1832–1914), member of the D.C. board of commissioners[19]
  • William Henry Holmes (1846–1933), known for scientific illustration of the American West, his role in the controversy over the antiquity of humans in the Americas, and leadership at the Smithsonian Institution

J

K

Gravesite of Oliver Hudson Kelley, who founded the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry
  • Samuel H. Kauffmann (1829–1906) newspaper publisher
  • Oliver Hudson Kelley (1826–1913), a founder of the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry (The Grange)
  • Margaret Sherratt Keys (1856-1942), British-born American artist, china painter, store proprietor
  • Angela Jurdak Khoury (1915–2011), Lebanon's first female diplomat and esteemed member of the Lebanese delegation to the United Nations.
  • Sergei Kourdakov (1951–1973), a former KGB agent who defected to Canada from the Soviet Union

L

M

N

  • Elizabeth Norment (1952–2014), actress

O

  • Carmel Offie (1909–1972), Central Intelligence Agency official

P

R

Gravesite of George Washington Riggs
  • John B. Raymond (1844–1886), politician
  • Isidor Rayner (1850–1912), Democratic politician, U.S. senator from Maryland
  • George Washington Riggs (1813–1881), banker, founder of Riggs Bank
  • William A. Rodenberg (1865–1937), politician
  • Frederick Rodgers (1842–1917), United States Navy rear admiral
  • Basil Rodzianko (1915–1999), Bishop of Orthodox Church in America Diocese of the West
  • Tim Russert (1950–2008), journalist, host of Meet the Press

S

Gravesite of Upton Sinclair
  • Alexander Robey Shepherd (1835–1902), politician, governor of District of Columbia from 1873 to 1874
  • Thetus W. Sims (1852–1939), politician and a member of the United States House of Representatives for the eighth congressional district of Tennessee from 1897 to 1921 [21]
  • Upton Sinclair (1878–1968), author, Pulitzer Prize winner
  • Alfred Edgar Smith (1903–1986), journalist and civil rights leader[22]
  • Ethel M. Smith (1877--1951), activist and social reformer.[23]
  • Frank M. Snowden Jr. (1911–2007), historian and classicist[24]
  • Ainsworth Rand Spofford (1825–1908), journalist and publisher, sixth Librarian of the United States Congress from 1864 to 1897
  • Harlan Fiske Stone (1872–1946), Chief Justice of the United States
  • Paulina Longworth Sturm (1925–1957), daughter of Alice Roosevelt and granddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt

T

  • Abner Taylor (1829–1903), politician
  • George Taylor (1820–1894), attorney and Democratic politician
  • Florence Calvert Thorne (1877–1973), labor activist
  • Thomas Weston Tipton (1817–1899), U.S. senator from Nebraska
  • Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams (1869–1962), Russian-American writer and journalist

V

Gravesite of Charles Doolittle Walcott
Grave of Burton K. Wheeler
  • Tran Van Chuong (1898–1986), South Vietnam's ambassador to the U.S., appointed by Ngo Dinh Diem
  • Willis Van Devanter (1859–1941), U.S. Supreme Court associate justice
  • Gore Vidal (1925–2012), author and playwright, next to his companion of 50 years Howard Austen.[25]

W

  • Edward T. Wailes (1903–1969), U.S. Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, Iran, Hungary and South Africa[26]
  • Charles Doolittle Walcott (1850–1927), Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
  • Paul Warnke (1920–2001), diplomat, assistant secretary of state from 1966 to 1969; SALT Negotiator and Director of the Arms Control and disarmament Agency under President Clinton
  • Sumner Welles (1892–1961), diplomat, undersecretary of State from 1937 to 1943
  • Burton K. Wheeler (1882–1975), Democratic politician and U.S. senator from Montana
  • James Alexander Williamson (1829–1902), Union Army general during the American Civil War, Medal of Honor recipient
  • Richard L. Wilson (1905–1981), journalist
  • William Windom (1827–1891), U.S. representative, senator, secretary of the treasury (under James Garfield & Benjamin Harrison)
  • Otis Wingo (1877–1930), U.S. representative from Arkansas's 4th congressional district, 1913–1930
  • Willie Wood (1936–2020), football player
  • John Vines Wright (1828–1908), U.S. representative from Tennessee, member of the Confederate Congress, judge of the Tennessee Supreme Court[27]

Y

  • Helen Yakobson, (1913–2002) academic and professor at George Washington University[28]

See also

References

  1. ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. March 13, 2009.
  2. ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Saint-Gaudens, Augustus" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 25 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 5.
  3. ^ "1886 The Adams Memorial". Archived from the original on May 9, 2008. Retrieved June 29, 2008.
  4. ^ "Cultural Tourism DC". CulturalTourismDC.org. Archived from the original on October 9, 2007. Retrieved January 12, 2008.
  5. ^ Goode, James M. The Outdoor Sculpture of Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 1974 pp. 343–352
  6. ^ Kvaran, Einar E., Cemetery Sculpture in America, unpublished manuscript
  7. ^ Marion, John Francis, Famous and Curious Cemeteries, Crown Publishers Inc., New York, 1977 pp. 78–80
  8. ^ "Funeral Services Held for Justice". The Washington Times. October 6, 1916. p. 4. Retrieved December 11, 2024 – via Newspapers.com.Open access icon
  9. ^ "Willard L. Beaulac, Former Envoy and Visiting Professor at BSU, Dies". The Muncie Evening Press. August 27, 1990. p. 18. Retrieved November 17, 2024 – via Newspapers.com.Open access icon
  10. ^ "Funeral Services for A. A. Birney Today". The Washington Herald. September 6, 1916. p. 10. Retrieved November 22, 2024 – via Newspapers.com.Open access icon
  11. ^ "Noted Architect and Author Dies in Newport News". The Virginian-Pilot. April 23, 1932. p. 1. Retrieved March 12, 2025 – via Newspapers.com.Open access icon
  12. ^ "Conway, Martin Franklin". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Retrieved February 16, 2025.
  13. ^ Flitter, Emily (November 7, 2018). "Evelyn Y. Davis, Shareholder Scourge of C.E.O.s, Dies at 89". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved July 18, 2022.
  14. ^ "J. Maury Dove". The Washington Herald. June 28, 1924. p. 16. Retrieved November 17, 2024 – via Newspapers.com.Open access icon
  15. ^ Feinsilber, Mike (October 1, 1983). "Noted Syndicated Columnist Roscoe Drummons, 81, Dies". The News Journal. p. 5. Retrieved November 16, 2024 – via Newspapers.com.Open access icon
  16. ^ "Dr. Susan Edson Buried". Washington, DC: The Evening Star. November 15, 1897. p. 13. Retrieved November 27, 2017.
  17. ^ "H. J. Ellicott Dead". The Baltimore Sun. February 12, 1901. p. 2. Retrieved May 1, 2024 – via Newspapers.com.Open access icon
  18. ^ "Henry Ellsworth Ewing, 1883–1951". Journal of Economic Entomology. 44 (2): 270. 1951. doi:10.1093/jee/44.2.270.
  19. ^ "L. G. Hine, Aged 81, Dies at Sanitarium". The Evening Star. January 20, 1914. p. 5. Retrieved November 26, 2024 – via Newspapers.com.Open access icon
  20. ^ "Blair Lee". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Retrieved October 20, 2024.
  21. ^ United States Congress. "Thetus W. Sims (id: S000441)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
  22. ^ "Alfred Edgar Smith (1903–1986)". Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Retrieved January 7, 2025.
  23. ^ "Ethel M. Smith". Times Herald. March 26, 1951. p. 5. Retrieved July 17, 2025 – via Newspapers.com.
  24. ^ Bernstein, Adam (February 23, 2007). "Frank M. Snowden Jr., at 95; Renowned Authority on Blacks in Antiquity". The Boston Globe. p. C8. Retrieved March 22, 2025 – via Newspapers.com.Open access icon
  25. ^ McGrath, Charles (August 1, 2012). "Gore Vidal dies at age 86". Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Halifax Media Group. Retrieved July 3, 2014.
  26. ^ "Edward T. Wailes". The Daily Times. July 4, 1969. p. 10. Retrieved November 17, 2024 – via Newspapers.com.Open access icon
  27. ^ "Wright, John Vines". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Retrieved October 4, 2022.
  28. ^ "Support Yakobson". Gwu.edu.
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