Rock Creek Cemetery

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Rock Creek Cemetery is an Template:Convert cemetery with a natural and rolling landscape located at Rock Creek Church Road, NW, and Webster Street, NW, off Hawaii Avenue, NE, in the Petworth neighborhood of Washington, D.C., across the street from the historic Soldiers' Home and the Soldiers' Home Cemetery. It also is home to the InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington.

On August 12, 1977, Rock Creek Cemetery and the adjacent church grounds were listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Rock Creek Church Yard and Cemetery.

History

File:Adams Memorial by Augustus Saint Gaudens in Rock Creek Cemetery (13912211).jpg
Adams Memorial, designed by sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens as a gravestone for Marian Hooper Adams, a Washington, D.C. socialite who committed suicide in 1885. A replica sits in the National Portrait Gallery.
File:Mausoleum interior..jpg
The mausoleum's interior at Rock Creek Cemetery

The cemetery was first established in 1719 in the British colonial Province of Maryland as a churchyard within the glebe of St. Paul's Episcopal Church within the Rock Creek Parish. Later, the vestry decided to expand the burial ground as a public cemetery to serve the city of Washington, D.C., which had acquired the cemetery within its boundaries as established in 1791. The cemetery was formally recognized and established through an Act of Congress in 1840.

An expanded cemetery was landscaped in the rural garden style, to function as both a cemetery and a public park. It is a ministry of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Rock Creek Parish, with sections for St. John's Russian Orthodox Church and St. Nicholas Orthodox Cathedral.

The park-like setting of Rock Creek Cemetery has several notable mausoleums, sculptures, and tombstones. The best known is the Adams Memorial, a contemplative, androgynous bronze sculpture seated before a block of granite that was created by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Stanford White. It marks the graves of Marian Hooper Adams and her husband, Henry Adams, and sometimes, mistakenly, the sculpture is referred to as Grief.<ref>Template:Cite EB1911</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Saint-Gaudens entitled it The Mystery of the Hereafter and The Peace of God that Passeth Understanding.

Other notable memorials include the Frederick Keep Monument, the Heurich Mausoleum, the Hitt Monument, the Hardon Monument, the Kauffman Monument that is known as The Seven Ages of Memory, the Sherwood Mausoleum Door, and the Thompson-Harding Monument.<ref name=culturaltourismdc.org>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Sculptors of works in the cemetery

Numerous fine works by unknown sculptors also exist in the cemetery.<ref>Goode, James M. The Outdoor Sculpture of Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 1974 pp. 343–352</ref><ref>Kvaran, Einar E., Cemetery Sculpture in America, unpublished manuscript</ref><ref>Marion, John Francis, Famous and Curious Cemeteries, Crown Publishers Inc., New York, 1977 pp. 78–80</ref>

Notable interments

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A

B

File:Berliner-marker.jpg
Gravesite of inventor Emile Berliner and his family members

C

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D

E

F

  • Charles S. Fairfax (1829–1869), Virginia-born California politician who was entitled to the British title 10th Lord Fairfax of Cameron
  • Stephen Johnson Field (1816–1899), Associate justice of US Supreme Court
  • Peter Force (1790–1868), politician, U.S. Army lieutenant in the War of 1812, newspaper editor, archivist, and historian, who served as the twelfth mayor of Washington, D.C., and whose library of historical documents became the first major Americana collection of the Library of Congress
  • Israel Moore Foster (1873–1950), Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives
  • William H. French (1815–1881), major general during the American Civil War and the Mexican War

G

File:Grosvenor Gilbert gravesite.jpg
Gravesite of Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor, an editor of National Geographic

H

J

K

File:Kelley Oliver Hudson grave.jpg
Gravesite of Oliver Hudson Kelley, who founded the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry

L

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M

N

O

  • Carmel Offie (1909–1972), Central Intelligence Agency official

P

R

File:Riggs George Washington grave.jpg
Gravesite of George Washington Riggs

S

File:Upton Sinclair grave.jpg
Gravesite of Upton Sinclair

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T

V

File:Walcott Charles Doolittle.jpg
Gravesite of Charles Doolittle Walcott
File:Grave of Senator Burton K Wheeler, Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington DC.jpg
Grave of Burton K. Wheeler
  • Tran Van Chuong (1898–1986), South Vietnam's ambassador to the U.S., appointed by Ngo Dinh Diem
  • Willis Van Devanter (1859–1941), U.S. Supreme Court associate justice
  • Gore Vidal (1925–2012), author and playwright, next to his companion of 50 years Howard Austen.<ref name="Sarasota Herald-Tribune – 1 August 2012 – Gore Vidal dies at age 86">Template:Cite news</ref>

W

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Y

  • Helen Yakobson, (1913–2002) academic and professor at George Washington University<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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See also

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References

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