Cedar Hill Cemetery (Suitland, Maryland)
Cedar Hill Cemetery, previously known as Forest Lake Cemetery, and also formerly Nonesuch Plantation, is a cemetery located in Suitland, Maryland. Following a series of land purchases starting in 1890, Forest Lake Cemetery was chartered and opened in 1895, but by 1913 few bodies were buried there.[1] In 1913, after going bankrupt and a failed 1908 sale to a developer, 130 acres of the 400 acre Forest Lake Cemetery were sold to form the Cedar Hill Cemetery.[2][3] Over time the cemetery was expanded and it is now over 150 acres (0.61 km2) in size. The oldest tombstone reads "Philenia W. Patte, Nov. 19, 1871, 58 years".
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Dionicio Rodriguez, a Mexican builder and artist, built six pieces in concrete at Cedar Hill during 1936 to 1938 most using a faux bois technique to make them resemble wood. He built two footbridges, a bench, a table in a pergola, a hollow "tree trunk" and an Annie Laurie Wishing Chair, also in a pergola.[4]
Cedar Hill was originally a "whites only" cemetery with Lincoln Memorial Cemetery across the road reserved for black graves.
Notable interments
- Walter Esau Beall - Baseball Player
- Eugene Black - Congressman
- Jonathan Bourne, Jr. - Senator
- Fred Lewis Crawford - Congressman
- Abe Fortas - Supreme Court Justice (unmarked)
- Stephen Warfield Gambrill - Congressman
- Walter William Herrell - Baseball Player
- Edward Keating - Congressman
- George Keefe - Baseball Player
- Raymond Moore - Baseball Player
- John Frost Nugent - Senator
- George Sutherland - Supreme Court Justice
- Charles Winfield Waterman- Senator
- James Eli Watson - Senator
There is also a mass grave for the victims of the Terra Cotta Railroad wreck at this cemetery.[5]
References
- "Forest Lake Cemetery. New Burial Site Selected on Pennsylvania Avenue Extended Southwest". The Washington Post. 7 April 1895.
- "Plan a New Cemetery". The Washington Post. 21 December 1913.
- "Suit Over Local Cemetery". The Washington Post. 2 March 1913.
- Light, Patsy (2008). Capturing Nature: The Cement Sculpture of Dionicio Rodriguez. College Station: Texas A&M University Press. p. 95. ISBN 1585446106.
- "Cedar Hill Cemetery". Buy and Sell Cemetery Plots LLC. Retrieved 17 August 2013.
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