RECENT COMMENTS

Return to Evergreen Cemetery draws some famous help

PHOTOS: Erik Heinila

This past Saturday, actress L. Scott Caldwell came out to a special clean-up at Evergreen Cemetery. L. Scott plays Belinda Gibson, loyal and trusted servant to the Green family, on PBS’ Civil War based drama Mercy Street which films on location in Virginia.

L. Scott was determined to find the grave of a woman named Julia Hoggett, who’s grave inscription reads:

“In Memory of my Mammy, Julia Hogged

1849-1930

She was born a slave and a slave she chose to remain. Slave to duty, a slave to love. Few people of any race or condition of life have lived so unselfishly, which is the same as saying so nobly. – LaMotte Blakely

L. Scott was drawn to this in part because of her role as Belinda and the fact that she stayed with the Green family. She imagined the grave was done by a man Hoggett helped raise, with the grave as tribute to her.

There are four contiguous cemeteries in the area east of Oakwood Cemetery known as the “Four Cemeteries at Evergreen”: Evergreen, East End Cemetery, Oakwood Colored Section, and Colored Pauper’s Cemetery. East End Cemetery is or was the final resting place for several notable Richmond area African-Americans such as Rosa Bowser and Virginia Randolph. Evergreen Cemetery dates 1891, and is the final resting place of Maggie L. Walker, John Mitchell, Jr., A.D.Price, and Rev.J.Andrew Bowler.

For information the regular cleanups at Evergreen Cemetery and East End Cemetery, contact John Shuck at jshuck@rocketmail.com or (804) 728-9475, or follow him on Twitter at @findagraver.

— ∮∮∮ —