Oak Hill Cemetery (Birmingham, Alabama)

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Oak Hill Cemetery, located just north of downtown, is Birmingham, Alabama's oldest and most distinguished cemetery. Originally 21.5 acres on the estate of James M. Ware, it was already a burial ground by April 1869 when it served as the resting place for the infant daughter of future mayor Robert H. Henley. It was marked as "City Cemetery" on the original plats for Birmingham laid out by the Elyton Land Company and was formally sold to the city on December 29, 1873 for the sum of $1,073.50.

Most of the 10,000 or so burials at Oak Hill were interred before 1930, including nine of the ten landholders who founded the city, many early mayors, a Revolutionary soldier, numerous American Civil War veterans, and the first male child born in the city. Although few records exist from the time, most believe the "Potter's Field" section was also used as the final resting place for many victims of the 1873 cholera epidemic.

In 1889 Judge A. O. Lane purchased 200 acres on the southern slopes of Red Mountain (Birmingham, Alabama), now Lane Park, for the burial of paupers, thereby ending the use of Oak Hill's "Potter's Field". In 1928 the caretaker's cottage near the center of the property, was removed to the southwest corner of the cemetery and a new "Pioneer's Memorial Building" was constructed of Indiana limestone, designed by Miller & Martin Architects with William Kessler, landscape architect.

In 1977, Oak Hill Cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The Oak Hill Memorial Association keeps an office in the former caretaker's cottage and published a quarterly newsletter, the Oak Hill Pioneer, from Winter 1999 to Fall 2001, with articles about the history of the city in the context of the lives of those buried at Oak Hill.

[edit] Notable burials

William S. Mudd, builder of Arlington Antebellum Home & Gardens
Robert Henley, First mayor of Birmingham
Frank Dixon, Governor of Alabama
Louise Wooster, famed Madam
Mortimer Jordan, health care pioneer
William H. Smith, Governor of Alabama 1868-1870
Rucker Agee, banker and map collector
Edmund Rucker, Civil War general
Charles Linn, industrialist and financier
John T. Milner, railroad engineer, pioneer
Edward Tutwiler, railroad and mining engineer, developer
Henry F. DeBardeleben, industrialist and developer
Ellen Pratt DeBardeleben, daughter of Daniel Pratt
James Sloss, railroad magnate, founder of Sloss Furnaces
Walter Henley, coal baron, banker, philanthropist
F. B. Yielding, founder of Yielding department store chain
Henry M. Caldwell, president of Elyton Land Company, owner of Peanut Depot building
Arthur H. Parker, educator, namesake of A. H. Parker High School
William E. B. Davis, pioneer gynecologist
Frank P. O'Brien, manufacturer, mayor, industrialist, developer and opera-house owner