Visiting the cemetery

It’s peaceful as we stand under the big magnolia trees at Helena’s Confederate Cemetery on this hot Saturday in May. Confederate Cemetery, set high on Crowley’s Ridge, is part of the larger Maple Hill Cemetery. I’m here with a group from Little Rock. We’re spending the day touring the Delta on the Arkansas and Mississippi sides of the river.

I like old cemeteries. That might sound strange to some, but the state’s oldest cemeteries are fascinating places to visit for those who enjoy history, art and nature. Maple Hill is near the top of my list of favorite Arkansas cemeteries.

Graveyard Hill, the city’s first public cemetery, became the Union Army’s Battery C during the Civil War Battle of Helena on July 4, 1863. It was destroyed by the battle. Remains were re-interred in what became Maple Hill. The earliest death date on a headstone at Maple Hill is 1827. That grave likely was moved from Graveyard Hill. Maple Hill originally was known as Evergreen Cemetery and was enclosed by evergreens. It received its current name in 1898.

Teams of mules were used to create terraces on this steep part of Crowley’s Ridge. The magnolia, maple, cedar and oak trees are nothing short of magnificent.

The Phillips County Memorial Association was organized in 1869 and worked to re-inter Confederate soldiers. The most famous of these graves is that of Confederate Gen. Patrick Cleburne, a former Helena resident whose remains were brought from St. John’s Cemetery in Maury County, Tenn., in 1870. Interpretive panels at Confederate Cemetery tell of the events surrounding the return of Cleburne’s remains. A marble column was erected in 1891 in memory of Cleburne. The following year, a monument honoring all Confederate soldiers was placed in the cemetery. The Cleburne memorial is a 15-foot-tall marble shaft. The Confederate memorial is a marble depiction of a soldier mounted on a 30-foot-high granite shaft.

Maple Hill is the final resting place for two other Confederate generals, Thomas Hindman and James Tappan. Interpretive panels also have been installed at nearby Magnolia Cemetery, a black cemetery that recently was listed on Preserve Arkansas’ list of the 10 most endangered places in the state. I served for six years on the Arkansas Humanities Council, and one of our best initiatives was a grant program to restore African-American cemeteries such as the one at Helena.

In Little Rock, Mount Holly Cemetery is known as the Westminster Abbey of Arkansas. Sybil Crawford writes for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture that such a designation is justified due to the “number of individuals of significance in the fields of art, literature, religion and politics who are buried there. Eleven Arkansas governors are interred there as well as 13 state Supreme Court justices, four U.S. senators, four Confederate generals and 21 Little Rock mayors. … Before the establishment of Mount Holly, burials were made in private family cemeteries and a public burial ground on what would first become the Peabody School site and later the location of the Federal Building at Capitol Avenue and Gaines Street. A number of grave markers with dates predating the formation of Mount Holly represent reinterments from the Capitol Avenue site.”

Nine people buried at Mount Holly have Arkansas counties named after them—Ashley, Conway, Faulkner, Fulton, Garland, Izard, Newton, Sevier and Woodruff. Mount Holly’s grounds were deeded to the city of Little Rock by prominent residents Chester Ashley and Roswell Beebe in 1843. Businessmen who felt that the city wasn’t keeping up the grounds formed a cemetery commission in 1877. Almost four decades later, a group of women decided that the men weren’t doing their part to keep up the cemetery. The women incorporated the Mount Holly Cemetery Association in July 1915.“As befits its City of Roses location, the cemetery’s many varieties of old roses, mature trees, handcrafted signs that identify its narrow lanes and styles of its structures give Mount Holly a look of understated Victorian elegance,” Crawford writes. “Several grave markers are the work of mainstream American stone carvers, and the marker for Albert Pike’s family (which Pike designed) is the work of Robert Eberhard Launitz, said to be the father of monumental art in America. Mount Holly’s collection of cemetery furniture includes a number of cast-iron pieces, and ornate iron fencing encloses several older lots.” M y mother, father and brother are buried in what’s known as the “new section” of Rose Hill Cemetery at Arkadelphia, though people have been interred in that section for six decades. It’s considered “new” because the original cemetery opened in 1876. The Maddox family donated land for the cemetery. What first was known as Maddox Cemetery was renamed Rose Hill in 1880.

A few graves, including those of Confederate soldiers killed during the Civil War, were moved from the city’s first public cemetery to Rose Hill.

The lone Confederate governor of Arkansas, Arkadelphia attorney Harris Flanagin, is buried here. So is Rev. John McLaughlin, a founder of Arkadelphia Methodist College (now Henderson State University). Rose Hill Cemetery, which has more than 3,100 graves, is like other old Arkansas cemeteries with its family plots surrounded by wrought-iron fences or concrete walls. It’s shaded by giant magnolia and cedar trees, providing a nice place to walk for those of us who understand the appeal of Arkansas’ historic cemeteries.