A former parish burial ground on the campus of Georgetown University.
The second burial ground of Holy Trinity Church was located a few blocks north and west of the church, at the western terminus of Third (P) Street, near the southwestern corner of the grounds of Visitation Convent. Although sometimes called Trinity Burial Ground, or the Old Burying Ground, it was best known as the College Ground. Although Holy Trinity’s records of baptisms and marriages go back to 1795, the oldest death register begins on December 8, 1818, which appears to be the date of the first burial in the College Ground. While tombstones dated 1762 and 1764 were still to be seen there as late as 1945, Father Kelly explained that these stood over remains that had been brought to the College Ground from other places.
(Laurence J. Kelly, S.J., The History of Holy Trinity Parish, Washington D.C. 1795-1945, 1945). Father Kelly says the burial ground was “west of the College”, but Boschke’s Topographical Map of the District of Columbia is more precise.)
The most revered grave in the College Ground was that of Susan Decatur, the widow of naval hero Stephen Decatur. A few years after her husband’s death she converted to Catholicism, and, at a moment when Georgetown College was in great need, advanced the equivalent of three million dollars. Her house stood about where White-Gravenor Hall is now, and when she died in 1860, she was laid to rest in the Fenwick family lot, just steps from where she had lived.
(“Cemetery Yields Forgotten Graves at Georgetown U.“, Washington Star (January 24, 1931); “Old Graveyard Unearthed at Dormitory Site”, Washington Herald (January 25, 1931); “Heraldings of Old-Time Washington”, Washington Herald (March 2, 1931); Warner, At Peace With All Their Neighbors, 199.)
Although Decatur is the only famous name associated with the College Ground, the death register of Holy Trinity does contain one or two other items of interest.
Don Francisco Pizarro Martinez, Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Minister of the Mexican Republic was buried on the 12th instant on the left side behind the Chapel of St. Francis Xaverius on the college-ground. (February 7, 1840)
Carbery, Henry, who died on the 25th inst. (May 27, 1822).
Mrs. Sybilla Carbery, who died on the 3d instant suddenly was buried in the college ground near her husband. (April 6, 1840)
Captain Carbery served in the Revolutionary War, at the end of which he led his men in a march on the capital––Philadelphia, at the time––to demand their back pay. Congress felt threatened, and Carbery was accused of treason. The incident is said to have influenced the determination that the permanent national capital be governed by Congress. Exonerated, Carbery married Sybilla Schneitzel of Frederick, and lived out his days at Cincinnati, his farm on Foxhall Road.
(Journal of the Columbia Historical Society, 19:65. Warner, At Peace, 199, speaks of three Catholic Carberys who married Protestants. Henry would make it four.)
Of course, the vast majority of burials in the College Ground would have been ordinary people. Besides English Catholics, and their Maryland and Virginia descendants, Irish surnames, and to a lesser extent, German surnames, are very common in the Death Register, and the College Ground even had an epitaph in Welsh. (Grave Stone Transcriptions, 1946, vertical file on cemeteries, Historical Society of Washington.)
That Georgetown had a considerable free black population is also reflected in the Death Register.
______ Barker, a Colored Man of Geo:town (July 23, 1819)
Mary C. Gray a Col. Person, who died the 27. Inst. (July 28, 1819)
Catherine Dotson, a free woman, who died the 18th inst. (July 9, 1824)
Elizabeth, age 6, col’d, daughter of Robert Parker and Lucinda Sewall, was buried in Mr. Threlkeld’s lot, in the Catholic cemetery. (September 7, 1834)
(John Threlkeld, a Protestant, had a lot in a Catholic burial ground, apparently because some of his slaves––as well as free blacks with whom he had connections––were Catholic. But Threlkeld need not have purchased it; as the seller of the the entire property he may have been accorded the lot as a courtesy. Thomas Corcoran, though Protestant, also had lots for the burial of Catholic slaves: Warner, At Peace, 252.)
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Slave Burials
That slaves were buried in the College Ground is amply confirmed in the Death Register of Holy Trinity Church, Georgetown, D.C. The number of slave burials between 1821 and 1833 appears to be upward of sixty. (1821 is the year of the earliest entry; after 1833 parishioners of Holy Trinity, including slaves, were more likely to be buried in Trinity Church Upper Grave Yard, which is now Holy Rood Cemetery.)
Charity, a servant woman of Mr. Zech. Smith’s, who died the 19th inst. (January 18, 1821)
Peter, a Servt. Boy of Mrs. Weaver, who died the 21st inst. (January 22, 1821)
Smith’s Louisa, a col’d child. (January 22, 1821)
Teresa, a servt. woman of Mrs. Spalding. (January 31, 1821)
Rachel, a Col’d Woman of the College Wash House. (October 22, 1821)
Ruth, a Col’d Woman of the Visitation. (January 24, 1823)
_____ a child from the people belonging to the Monastery. (February 20, 1825)
Charles – black – servant of the College. (January 3, 1832)
Mary (Col’d), age 6, daughter of John Lee, a free (Col’d) man, and of Mary, a slave to Mr. Newton, was buried in the College Ground, paid. (January 5, 1835)
George – black – servt. of Miss Jane Sewall = chol. [cholera], (August 29, 1832)
Clare – black – servt. of Mr. Jos. Semmes – chol. (September 4, 1832)
Sarah – black – servt. of Mrs. Widow Semmes – chol. (September 6, 1832)
Leonard (Butler) black – a servt. of Mr. Birth – chol. (September 7, 1832)
A longer list, compiled by the Georgetown Slavery Archive in 2019 from the same record:
Charity–––January, 1821
Peter–––January, 1821
Louisa–––January, 1821)
Teresa––– January, 1821
Joseph Smallwood–––September, 1821
Louis–––October, 1821
Rebecca Robbie–––October, 1821
Rachel–––October, 1821
Margaret–––January, 1822
Catherine––– January, 1822
Harriet–––February, 1822
Sarah–––August, 1822
Teresa Queen–––October, 1822
Ann–––November, 1822
Ruth–––January, 1823
Jane–––January, 1823
Louisa Jackson–––February, 1823
Ignatius––– January, 1824
Mary–––January, 1824
Joseph–––May, 1824
Catherine–––June, 1824
Osborn–––August, 1824
a newborn child–––November, 1824
a child–––February, 1825
a child–––February, 1825
Jacob–––April, 1825
Harriet Jones–––June, 1825
an infant–––October, 1827
Stephen–––August, 1828
Mary Butler–––September, 1828
Fanny Burges–––November, 1828
Mary–––December, 1828
Louisa–––February, 1829
George–––March, 1829
Clare–––March, 1829
Jane–––May, 1830
Charles–––January, 1832
Susan–––March, 1832
David–––July, 1832
Joseph–––July, 1832
a child–––August, 1832
George–––August, 1832
Clare–––September, 1832
Ignatius–––September, 1832
Henry–––September, 1832
July Ann–––September, 1832
Nichola–––September, 1832
Ignatius–––September, 1832
Elizabeth–––September, 1832
Robert–––September, 1832
a child–––September, 1832
John–––September, 1832
Charles–––October, 1832
Mary–––October, 1832
Sarah–––October, 1832
John Dyson–––October, 1832
Lucy–––December , 1832
Sarah–––December, 1832
Charity–––December, 1832
Robert–––December, 1832
Jane–––January, 1833
Jacob–––February, 1833
a child–––March, 1833
Walter–––March, 1833
Dick–––June, 1833
Nancy Smallwood–––July, 1833
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The More Recent History of the College Ground
Holy Trinity Church was “born in the shadow and of the substance of Georgetown College”, and the land it was built on had been the property of Georgetown since the days of its founding. The situation was somewhat complicated by the fact that the church and its buildings had been built by the contributions of its parishioners, and that Father Neale’s 1796 purchase of land had apparently been in his own name. The matter was resolved in 1942, when title to Holy Trinity was transferred to the Archdiocese of Baltimore and Washington. While the graves in the churchyard “conveyed” to the Archdiocese, the outlying burial grounds of Holy Trinity Church did not, and have been in the care of Georgetown University since that time. (Warner, At Peace, p.x; Kelly, Holy Trinity, 78; President and Directors of Georgetown College, to Michael J. Curley, Archbishop of Baltimore, DC Liber 7723-513 (February 12, 1942), Recorder of Deeds.)
In 1931 there was an offer to remove the bodies. “Cedar Hill Cemetery, where it is proposed to reinter the bones of these old Washington residents without charge to Georgetown University… is located in Maryland… in line with the extension of Pennsylvania avenue southeast. P. W. Calfee, one of the officials of the cemetery, has written a letter to Georgetown University, offering to remove the bodies.”
“Reburial Of Susan Decatur’s Body, Recently Found, Offered,” Evening Star, February 19, 1931, p. 18.
In 1953 Georgetown removed the College Ground to make way for future expansion, and its graves were transferred to Mount Olivet Cemetery. The loss of the oldest Catholic parish cemetery in Washington does not seem to have occasioned comment, perhaps because the number of graves involved did not sound large. The public was given to understand that parish records listed exactly one hundred and eighty-nine persons buried in the old cemetery. (“GU to Transfer Ancient Graves“, Washington Post, April 17, 1953.)
How this number was arrived at is anybody’s guess. It may have reflected what could still be seen of the College Ground––such as the number of tombstones that still stood upright––but not the underlying reality. Only in a military cemetery is the ratio of graves to gravestones one to one. In a parish cemetery, by contrast, more than one person may be buried under one stone, and some people never get a stone at all. (By way of comparison, the ratio of graves to gravestones in Holy Trinity’s third burial ground, Holy Rood Cemetery, is 7312 to 2550, almost 3 to 1.) Many would only have had wooden markers, which are not durable. So, over time, the graves of the poor, and of slaves––two classes of society that were once quite numerous in Georgetown––would have become invisible to posterity.
The College Ground came into use because the Holy Trinity churchyard had reached its limit, and was the only parish cemetery available between 1818 and 1833. According to the death register of Holy Trinity, about nine hundred parishioners died in those years, and, as burials in the College Ground continued for decades after that, the total is likely to be nearer to a thousand.
The transfer of remains from the College Ground to Mount Olivet Cemetery, on the other hand, consisted of only “fifty bodies, more or less”. The unavoidable conclusion is that ninety-five percent of the people buried in the College Ground were not moved to Mount Olivet.
(“Cemetery Yields Forgotten Graves at Georgetown U.“, Washington Star, January 24, 1931; “Old Graveyard Unearthed at Dormitory Site”, Washington Herald, January 25, 1931; Interments File, Mount Olivet Cemetery, Section 61, lots 61-63.)
The Unquiet Grave of Susan Decatur
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Carlton Fletcher
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