Cemetery Trivia

Let's start July off right.  Faculty Lounge readers have been picking off my trivia questions with remarkable ease of late.  That means it's time to get a serious trivia question.  That sent me flipping through my pictures and I've come up with this rather odd photograph of a cemetery.  Odd in that the monument appears to be drapped in black (look at the caps on the poles).  Also odd in what's being commemorated in this particular cemetery.

Where is it?  I think you'll be surprised by the location.  And once we get the location figured out I'll post a picture of the memorial at the center.

Now that Jason Mazzone has picked this off as the "Hebrew Cemetery" in Richmond, Virginia, I want to post a picture of the memorial at the center of it.

Comments

[Jeffrey Harrison]

Could that be a confederate flag at the base of the stone?

[Alfred Brophy]

Yes it is, Jeff. That narrows the possibilities down considerably, obviously. And also is the key to what I found odd about this particular cemetery.

[Jason Mazzone]

Shockoe Hill Cemetery, Richmond.

[Alfred Brophy]

Jason, you are unbelievably good at this. I have no idea how you do it. In this case you are very, very close. This cemetery is within sight of Shockoe Hill. But this isn't in Shockoe Hill, which has a large Confederate section. This is a different cemetery.

[Jason Mazzone]

The Hebrew Confederate Cemetery. In Richmond.

[Alfred Brophy]

Exactly! That's it. What surprises me about this is that there's a special section set off in the cemetery for men who died in service to the Confederacy. I'm not sure why that surprises me, because I know that there was a large Jewish population in Richmond before the war and if I'd thought about it for a moment I suppose I would have expected more than a few of them to have fought for the Confederacy. And there is, of course, an important literature on Judah P. Benjamin's service to the Confederate government. Still I found it odd and jarring to see the Confederate flag in that cemetery.