Cemeteries

6 Locations | Curated by RHDC

Follow this tour to visit and learn about the old cemeteries and burial grounds designated as Raleigh Historic Landmarks.

Hillcrest Cemetery is one of four burying grounds established for the African American community in segregated Raleigh. The prominent Lightner brothers, Calvin and Rayford, established Hillcrest in 1926 in association with their Lightner Funeral Home, founded in 1908. It was the first undertaking…
View Story Show on Map

Mount Hope, established around 1872, is one of the first municipal cemeteries for African Americans in the state. City Cemetery’s African American section was full by 1871 and the city purchased eleven or so acres south of town for additional burial grounds. It was common in this period for cities…
View Story Show on Map

Raleigh established City Cemetery in 1798, one of the earliest public burying grounds in the state. Narrow lanes divide the original four acres into segregated quadrants. Graves for African Americans are in the southeast quadrant, for white citizens of Raleigh in the two north quadrants, and for…
View Story Show on Map

Prominent layman John O’Rorke donated land to the Catholic Diocese for this cemetery, the oldest historic resource in the city associated with Raleigh’s Catholic community. Established at a time when prevailing Protestant thought often made life difficult for Catholics, the cemetery retains twelve…
View Story Show on Map

Oberlin Cemetery is a 3-acre site within the Oberlin community, once a thriving African American village located on Raleigh's outskirts. According to oral tradition, the cemetery originally acted as a slave burial ground. As Oberlin grew through the late 1800s and early 1900s, the cemetery…
View Story Show on Map

Oak Grove is the community cemetery for Method, a Raleigh neighborhood established after the Civil War outside the then-city limits by formerly enslaved people. The founding families of Method are buried near the center of the cemetery, their gravesites marked with historically significant markers:…
View Story Show on Map

Loading Stories
Map