Historically called the Burial Ground for Negroes and the old Powder Magazine ground, the Shockoe Bottom African Burial Ground lies at your feet. This is the older of Richmond’s two municipal burial grounds established for the interment of free people of color and the enslaved. The ground sits at 1554 E Broad St., with an alternate address of 1520 E Marshall St., tucked into what was known historically as Shockoe Valley and today called Shockoe Bottom.
Scholars long thought burials here might date as early as 1750, but a land deed supports a 1799 founding, when the city acquired two parcels of land to establish municipal burial grounds. The burying ground was closed to new interments in 1816 when the larger Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground opened at 1305 N 5th St., about a mile and a half away on Shockoe Hill. Across the street from you is the site of Lumpkin’s Jail, a stark neighbor in this layered landscape of memory.
The addresses, dates, and names here — 1554 E Broad St., 1799, 1816, Shockoe Hill at 1305 N 5th St. — trace the streets and the valley before you.