There is still some mystery about who’s buried in the Daughters of Zion Cemetery’s modest plot opposite Oakwood Cemetery. The grounds are not crowded and the headstones are found mainly in clusters by family, but the peace that presides there now must have been hard-fought.
The property was purchased in January of 1873 by the Daughters of Zion to serve as a dignified resting place for the Black population of the city, apart from the segregated Oakwood Cemetery. In a 2001 report on the subject, historian Ted Delaney speculated that the Daughters of Zion were a charitable secret society, like a Black female version of the Free Masons. Little trace of the organization remains, and all of it vanishes by 1933, when the group is thought to have disbanded, but in its time, its members would have been a crucial organized force for the newly freed.
“Ownership of or burial in a plot in the Daughters of Zion Cemetery was a pro-active statement of independence from the institutionalized segregation that pervaded all aspects of life and death in post-Emancipation Charlottesville,” Delaney writes
The oldest grave in the cemetery is that of 5-year-old Annie Buckner, who was interred there in April of 1873. Many of the surrounding graves, however, mark lives that would have begun under slavery and seen emancipation. The cemetery shows the outline of a Black community that was resilient and independent despite being so young.
Among the headstones are Reverend M.T. Lewis, 1843-1883, who canvassed for The People’s Advocate, a Black-owned newspaper published in Alexandria, Virginia; Charles Goodloe, 1834-1906, a carpenter who, with his wife, Nancy, helped build many Black homes and businesses in the area; and Benjamin Tonsler, 1854-1917, a passionate educator and eventual principal of the Jefferson Graded School for 30 years.