Mount Olivet Cemetery is a historic rural cemetery located at 1300 Bladensburg Road, NE in Washington, D.C. It is maintained by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington. The largest Catholic burial ground in the District of Columbia, it was one of the first in the city to be racially integrated.
The cemetery was created in 1858.[5][6][7] The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, which then covered the District of Columbia, purchased 40 acres (0.16 km2) of Fenwick Farm for the cemetery.[8] A gray stone lodge was built to mark the entrance.[6] Because the burial grounds at St. Matthew's, St. Patrick, and St. Peter churches were all full by that time, a number of graves were moved to the newly established Mount Olivet in order to make room at the old cemeteries for new burials.[9]
From the start, Mount Olivet was racially integrated. Most cemeteries in the city were not. More than 7,700 African Americans were buried at Mount Olivet between 1800 and 1919 (about 7.6 percent of all African American burials in the city). In comparison, 24,000 Caucasians were buried there during the same period. Mount Olivet was the only racially integrated cemetery from the 19th century to remain active as of 1989, although this changed in 2019 when Holy Rood Cemetery in Georgetown opened a columbarium.[12][13]
^Kelly, John (2017-02-27). "How a torpedoed ocean liner boosted the career of a D.C.-born newsman". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2022-01-17.
^Montgomery, Ben (October 2016). Leper Spy: The Story of an Unlikely Hero of World War II. Chicago Review Press. ISBN 978-1-61373-433-9. Retrieved 2022-01-12 – via Google Books.
Bergheim, Laura. The Washington Historical Atlas: Who Did What, When and Where in the Nation's Capital. Rockville, Md.: Woodbine House, 1992.
Johnson, Abby Arthur. "'The Memory of the Community': A Photographic Album of Congressional Cemetery." Washington History. 4:1 (Spring/Summer 1992), pp. 26–45.
Rash, Bryson B.Footnote Washington: Tracking the Engaging, Humorous, and Surprising Bypaths of Capital History. McLean, Va.: EPM Publications, 1983.
Richardson, Steven J. "The Burial Grounds of Black Washington: 1880–1919." Records of the Columbia Historical Society. 52 (1989), pp. 304–326.
Truett, Randle Bond. Washington, D.C.: A Guide to the Nation's Capital. New York: Hastings House, 1942.
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Catholic Cemeteries of the Archdiocese of Washington: Mount Olivet