Mount Holly Cemetery
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Mount Holly Cemetery | |
|---|---|
| U.S. National Register of Historic Places | |
 |
|
| Location: | Little Rock, Arkansas |
| Built/Founded: | 1873 |
| Added to NRHP: | March 5th, 1970 |
| NRHP Reference#: | 70000125 |
| Governing body: | City of Little Rock[1] |
Mount Holly Cemetery is the original cemetery in the Quapaw Quarter area of downtown Little Rock, Arkansas, and is the resting place for numerous Arkansans of note. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has been nicknamed "The Westminster Abbey of Arkansas".
The cemetery is the burial place for 10 former Governors of Arkansas, 6 United States Senators, 14 Arkansas Supreme Court Justices, 21 Little Rock Mayors, numerous Arkansas literary figures, Confederate Generals, and other worthies. Some of the notables buried at Mount Holly are:
- Dale Alford -- U.S. Representative from 1959-1963 and noted ophthalmologist
- David O. Dodd - boy martyr of the Confederacy
- Sanford Faulkner - the original 'Arkansas Traveller'
- John Gould Fletcher - Pulitzer Prize winning poet
- William Savin Fulton - Governor of Arkansas Territory 1835-1836, U.S. senator from Arkansas 1836-1844
- Quatie Ross - the wife of Cherokee Chief John Ross
- William E. Woodruff - founder of the Arkansas Gazette
There are also several slaves who are buried there, marked by extremely modest gravestones.
Every year in October several drama students from Parkview Arts and Science Magnet High School each select a person buried in the cemetery to research. They then prepare short monologues or dialogues, complete with period costumes, to be performed in front of the researched person's grave. Audiences are led through the cemetery from grave to grave by guides with candles. The event is called "Tales from the Crypt". Although it takes place around the same time as the American holiday Halloween, the event is meant to be historic rather than spooky.
[edit] References
- ^ National Register of Historic Places Inventory - Mount Holly Cemetery Nomination Form, National Park Service, 1970
|
||||||||||
