Mount Olivet Cemetery (Nashville)

Mount Olivet Cemetery
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
File:Mount Olivet Cemetery November.jpg
Location	1101 Lebanon Pike Nashville, Tennessee
Coordinates
NRHP Reference #	05001334
Added to NRHP	November 25, 2005

Mount Olivet Cemetery is a 206-acre (83 ha) cemetery located in Nashville, Tennessee.

Overview

Mount Olivet has been continuously operated since its establishment in 1856. It serves as the final resting place for many of Middle Tennessee's political and business leaders, including several former governors of Tennessee, U.S. Senators, and U.S. Congressional Representatives.

After the American Civil War, women of Nashville formed an association to raise funds to purchase a separate plot of land at the cemetery for the interment of Confederate dead. It became known as "Confederate Circle". It was used for the interment of Confederate soldiers who had died on nearby battlegrounds and as a memorial to their sacrifice. Women organized such memorial associations and raised money for interment of Confederate soldiers in major cities across the South and areas where there were concentrations of bodies. The memorial association arranged for burials of about 1,500 soldiers at Confederate Circle. Confederate veterans were also eligible for interment there.

In the 1990s, a funeral home was added to the grounds of Mount Olivet.

Immediately adjacent to the west, Calvary Cemetery has long served as the preferred burying place of Middle Tennessee Catholics. The two facilities are separated only by grass; one can walk from one cemetery to the other, although each has a separate entrance. Cars cannot pass between the two.

Approximately one mile (1.6 km) to the south is Greenwood Cemetery, where many of the most prominent African-American residents of Middle Tennessee have been buried.

Mount Olivet Cemetery is located at 1101 Lebanon Road, approximately two miles (three km) east of downtown Nashville. It is open to the public during daylight hours.

Notable burials

• Adelicia Acklen, wealthy Nashville businesswoman and socialite.
• John Meredith Bass, Mayor of Nashville from 1833 to 1834, and again in 1869.
• William B. Bate, Governor of Tennessee (1883 to 1887), American Civil War general
• John Bell, United States Senator and presidential candidate
• Aaron V. Brown, Governor of Tennessee (1845 to 1847), United States Postmaster General from 1857 to 1859
• James Stephens Brown, Mayor of Nashville from 1908 to 1909.
• George P. Buell, Union Army general
• Joseph Wellington Byrns, United States Congressman and Speaker of the House
• John Catron, U.S. Supreme Court Justice
• Benjamin F. ("Frank") Cheatham, Confederate general during the American Civil War
• Clarence Kelley Colley (1869-1956), architect.
• Washington Bogart Cooper (1802–1888), painter.
• George A. Dickel (1818–1894), liquor dealer and wholesaler
• Anne Dallas Dudley (1876–1955), women's suffrage activist
• Edward H. East (1830–1904), Tennessee Secretary of State, briefly served as the state's "acting governor" in 1865
• Jesse Babcock Ferguson, onetime minister of the Nashville Church of Christ, later associated with Spiritualism and Universalism
• Thomas Frist, co-founder of Hospital Corporation of America and father of the former majority leader of the U.S. Senate, Bill Frist
• Francis Furman (1816–1899), Nashville businessman during the Reconstruction Era. A building is named in his honor on the campus of Vanderbilt University, and his tomb, designed by sculptor Johannes Gelert (1852–1923), is the largest one in Mount Olivet Cemetery.
• Sidney Clarence Garrison (1885-1945), second President of Peabody College (now part of Vanderbilt University) from 1938 to 1945.
• Meredith Poindexter Gentry, United States Congressman
• Carl Giers, early photographer
• Alvan Cullem Gillem, Civil War Union general and post-bellum Indian fighter
• Vern Gosdin 1934–2009 country music legend
• William Crane Gray, (1835–1919), First Episcopal Bishop of the Missionary Jurisdiction of Southern Florida
• Felix Grundy (1775–1840), U.S. Senator from Tennessee and 13th Attorney General of the United States.
• George Blackmore Guild (1834–1917), Mayor of Nashville from 1891 to 1895.
• Robert Kennon Hargrove (1829–1905), a Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South
• Henry C. Hibbs (1882–1949), architect.
• E. Bronson Ingram, founder of Ingram Industries Inc., parent company of Ingram Barge Company; Ingram Book Company, the nation's largest book distributor; Ingram Micro; and other major companies
• Howell Edmunds Jackson, United States Senator and Supreme Court Justice
• William Hicks Jackson, Confederate general during the American Civil War
• Thomas A. Kercheval, Tennessee State Senator and Mayor of Nashville
• David Lipscomb, founder of Nashville Bible School (now Lipscomb University)
• William Litterer (1834–1917), Mayor of Nashville from 1890 to 1891.
• George Maney, Confederate Civil War general and U.S. Ambassador to Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay
• Jack C. Massey, entrepreneur who helped found or take public Hospital Corporation of America, Kentucky Fried Chicken and two other NYSE-listed companies
• Hill McAlister, Governor of Tennessee from 1933 to 1937
• Randal William McGavock (1826–1863), Mayor of Nashville from 1858 to 1859 and Confederate Lt. Colonel who was killed in the Battle of Raymond.
• Eliza Jane McKissack (1828–1900), founding head of music in 1890 to the forerunner of the University of North Texas College of Music
• Benton McMillin, Governor of Tennessee (1899 to 1903)
• Kindred Jenkins Morris (1819–1884), Mayor of Nashville from 1869 to 1871.
• Thomas Owen Morris (1845–1924), Mayor of Nashville from 1906 to 1908.
• William Nichol (1800–1878), Mayor of Nashville from 1835 to 1837.
• John Overton, friend of Andrew Jackson and one of the founders of Memphis, Tennessee
• Bruce Ryburn Payne (1874-1937), founding president of Peabody College (now part of Vanderbilt University) from 1911 to 1937.
• Colonel Buckner H. Payne (1799-1889), clergyman, publisher, merchant and racist pamphleteer.
• James E. Rains, American Civil War general killed in the 1862 Battle of Murfreesboro
• Fred Rose, music publishing executive
• William Percy Sharpe (1871–1942), Mayor of Nashville from 1922 to 1924.
• John Hugh Smith (1819–1870), Mayor of Nashville, Tennessee three times, from 1845 to 1846, from 1850 to 1853, and from 1862 to 1865.
• Ernest Stoneman, country music performer
• David K. Wilson (1919-2007), businessman and philanthropist; major donor to Vanderbilt University and the Republican Party.

References

• Wills, W. Ridley, II. A Walking Tour of Mt. Olivet Cemetery. Nashville, 1993.

External links

• Civil War Trails