VIRGINIA GENEALOGY & HISTORY People. Places. Evidence.

KINGS OF VIRGINIA · RESEARCH LIBRARY

Cemeteries & Lost Places

Document the places that hold community memory, with care for people and the land.

Cemetery records, building surveys, maps, and local accounts can help reconstruct a place. Each source has limits: a memorial inscription is not automatically proof of every relationship it names, and an old map may not establish a present-day location.

View across the James River from Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond in 1865.
View of the James River from Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, April 1865. Photograph by John Reekie. Civil War photographs, 1861–1865, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division; no known publication restrictions.

No cemetery inventory is published here yet. Precise locations, transcriptions, and identifications will be added only after source review.

Document a place responsibly

  • Record the source, date observed, and how the place was identified.
  • Ask permission before entering private property; do not assume a historic listing grants access.
  • Do not move stones, disturb a burial, or use damaging methods to improve an inscription.
  • Keep uncertain readings in brackets and preserve an unedited photograph alongside a transcription.
  • Avoid publishing sensitive burial-site locations without appropriate review.

King William County Courthouse

An initial historic-place resource with an attributable archival photograph and links to the survey record.

Read the source guide →

Virginia DHR cemetery preservation resources ↗