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Happy Anniversary
Three Lynchburg Landmarks CelebrateTheBigTwo-O-O: The Old City Cemetery, Poplar Forest, and Centenary United Methodist Church
The year 1806 was marked by small but significant changes in the city’s landscape.
During the decade prior, Lynchburg’s fledging Methodist congregation had swelled from approximately five to fifty people (a considerable number in a town with only 500 inhabitants). It was time
to fold up the tents and establish a permanent meetinghouse in the “seat of Satan’s Kingdom.”
Lynchburg’s governing body, The Common Council, was also feeling the heat—albeit of an altogether different sort. Meeting the needs of a growing population included creating a proper, permanent resting place
for increasing numbers of deceased. City father John Lynch rose to the challenge, donating an acre of land for use as a public cemetery.
Centenary United Methodist Church and the Old City Cemetery share an anniversary year and have
a fair number of constituents in common. Perhaps for this reason, the two are linked together in the minds of Lynchburg citizens. Even today, it’s not unusual to hear the public burial ground referred to as the “old Methodist cemetery.”
At the same time Lynchburg’s Methodists and city founders were working to get their houses in order, the region’s most prominent resident, Thomas Jefferson, was focusing on his Central Virginia hideaway. In 1806, he traveled from the President’s House to Bedford County, where he undertook a do-it-yourself project, laying the eight-sided foundation for his retirement retreat, Poplar Forest. For more insight into all of these events, be sure to read the next three articles.
 LYNCH’S FERRY
A City up0n μ Hill: A Hi∂t0ry 0f the Old City Cemetery in Picture∂
This year is the Old City Cemetery’s Bicentenary, and to celebrate this important anniversary the Southern Memorial Association is reflecting on the long and rich history of Lynchburg’s “city of the dead.”
As part of a series of “signature” bicentennial events and projects, the SMA is planning to publish a special booklet of historical photographs of the Cemetery
in 2007. The following images represent
a small sample of what we’ve uncovered
so far. If you have any old pictures of
the Cemetery in your family scrapbooks, please let us know!
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