ALEXANDRIA, VA - CEMETERIES – Ivy Hill Cemetery
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Source: Library of Virginia Digital Collection


LVA Titled Files: Survey Report, Ivy Hill Cemetery:
                  1938 Feb. 25
                  Research made by Virginia Daingerfield

Cemetery Location:  A mile from the Union Station going north it is King Street 
                    extended.  The A.B. & W. Bus Line pass by the Cemetery 
                    gates, and the bus is marked Seminary, one takes from 
                    Alexandria the Seminary Road, on the north side of the 
                    cemetery.
                    Alexandria


Ivy Hill Cemetery is situated a mile from the heart of the city, on what is
now King Street extended, is without doubt the most interesting and historical
cemetery in Alexandria.  One is impressed not only by its simplicity of beauty
but by the names of the men and women inscribed on the stones and where a
canopy of magnificent oak trees are placed naturally around the graves as
though they are sentinels that guard the dead, they are, my informant tells me
as old as the cemetery and extend below the sloping ground into a fine forest.
The dividing line from each being the wide murmuring brook that can be heard
from the high hill of the keeper’s Lodge which is at the entrance.  There are
about three acres composing the grounds and it is indeed an ideal spot for
those who lie beneath the sod.

Ivy Hill Cemetery was incorporated in 1846 and many are the names of men known
to history buried there.  It shows the stone of John Dominique La Mothe,
second Bishop to the Hawaiian Isle of Man. June 8th, 1868, who died in
Baltimore in 1869 and by his side his wife, Margaret Walker, daughter of Rev.
Woodson Walker.

Julia A. Lee, born in Richmond, December 12, 1805, died in Washington 1885.
Her monument was made in Alexandria by the father of the present owner of the
oldest and finest Monumental works in the city, Mr. Thomas Chauncey, 315 South
Alfred Street, who in 1937 renovated and placed new stones on the ancestors of
the late Fairfax Harrison who received the order personally from him, and it
was his father who made the headstone of Richard Bland Lee, and also the large
monument in memory of J.E. Lee, J.A. Lee and R.B. Lee.  This handsome stone is
a tribute to the Lee family.

One must not pass the stone of Burton Harrison 1838, the son of Burton
Harrison and Constance Cary 1842, and the stone of Archibald Cary and Moninia
Fairfax who were married November 26th, 1867 and left “three sons to honor
their name.” Father and Mother R.S.P.

And most to be honored in the eyes of The Creator are the unhistorical heroes
who gave up their lives for their fellow men, the brave firemen who lost their
lives November 17, 1855, by fighting so gallantly the destructive fire which
occurred in Alexandria in the oldest drug store in  Virginia (Leadbeaters),
corner of King and Duke Streets, now in a state of dilapidation as though
patiently waiting for a dose of its own medicine.  It is a dismal eye sore,
but will before long be restored.  It was here the old record books in the
hands of the heirs now show many orders from Mrs. Washington of Mt. Vernon,
also many were the names in the books of celebrated men and women, George
Mason of Gunston Hall and all the great and near great.  The names of the
firemen who lost their lives putting out the fire are also recorded amongst
the Leadbeater’s record.

Burton Harrison, noted lawyer practiced with great success in the nineteenth
hundreds in New York, his wife, Constance Cary Harrison, an  American writer,
was born in Alexandria, Virginia.  Her ancestors were prominent in the
Revolution.  She was educated in private schools in Virginia, married in 1867
to Burton Harrison, descendant of presidents.  Mrs. Burton Harrison wrote many
books of merit in the fiction line, one written at Bar Harbor, Maine, where
she had a summer home, and this book created a sensation at that time and was
called “Golden Rod” also “A Daughter of the  South” and “Virginia Cousin”.  Of
historical note is John Dominique La Mothe Second Bishop of Hawaiian Isle of
Man.

Informant:  John C. Winderhart, Keeper of Ivy Hill Cemetery


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	This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives 
	by:  Joan Renfrow

	NOTICE:  I have no relationship or further information in 
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