Join us at Hillcrest Cemetery in Holly Springs, MS on Memorial Day Monday May 30th!
Check out the Find a Grave here
48 State Tour Facebook Event Page
*Images via Hill Country History*
Our local event host is with the Yellow Fever Martyrs Museum in Holly Springs, as well as Hill Country History and the 1878 Project! There is a volunteer group and a ton of local interest in the upcoming workshop. Hill Crest Cemetery has been severely damaged in two back-to-back storms recently, but most of the fallen trees have now been removed. Several monuments were severely damaged, so we’re excited to get in and help to repair the cemetery.
“Hill Crest Cemetery is one of great gems of Holly Springs and one of the finest historic cemeteries in north Mississippi, though the local government has not always treated it as such. Hill Crest Cemetery was first formed in 1845, when R. H. Byrne donated the land of the cemetery to the city of Holly Springs. However, these grounds were used as a cemetery even before the city took control of the land, as there are several early graves which date to 1838. This original cemetery plot is located along Center Street (the old Oxford Road), and many of the oldest tombstones in the cemetery can still be found there today. In 1904, the cemetery expanded north, after Dr. John Burton deeded a lot to the city which had earlier been used as a baseball field. This part of the cemetery fronts Elder Street, which is also where the beautiful iron gates, donated by the Wynne family, can be found.
For many decades the cemetery was simply known as the Town Cemetery. It received its name “Hill Crest” in 1905, by Mrs. W. A. Anderson, after attending the funeral of Hindman Doxey. Many of the greatest citizens in Holly Springs and Marshall County are buried in Hill Crest, including founding fathers, war heroes, local, state and federal politicians and other figures.
Hill Crest Cemetery contains the bodies of many unknown soldiers who died in the Civil War, along with the remains of six Confederate generals. In addition, there are two Confederate monuments in the Cemetery: the Monument to the Confederate Dead, erected in 1874-1876 (the central shaft was not erected until 1901), and a newer monument to the southeast, erected by the Sons of the Confederacy in 1890.”
*info from Hill Country History*