WRAL.com: Raleigh, Durham, Fayetteville

Log in to WRAL.com with one click using your favorite social network:

Register with WRAL.com using your favorite social network:

2:43 a.m. • 5-26-13

58°F

Weather Forecast for Raleigh

Today: Partly Cloudy.
- Hi: 75° F
Mon: Partly Cloudy.
- Hi: 80° F
Tue: Thunderstorm.
- Hi: 85° F

Other Locations

7 Day Forecast

Posted: February 19

Raleigh designates Oberlin Cemetery as landmark

Raleigh, N.C. — The City Council voted Tuesday to designate Oberlin Cemetery in Raleigh as a historic landmark.

The cemetery, at 1014 Oberlin Road, is historically and culturally significant as an early black cemetery in Raleigh. It was established in 1873 but may have originated as an earlier slave grave yard. The cemetery also is one of the most significant surviving historic landmarks in Oberlin Village, the largest freedmen’s village in Wake County during the Reconstruction Era.

About 600 graves are believed to be in Oberlin Cemetery, but only 145 monuments, including one zinc monument and one wood grave marker, are visible. Artistically, the monuments represent the work of professional stonecutters in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The cemetery is the 151st designated Raleigh Historic Landmark.

Web Editor: Matthew Burns

Get News Alerts to your Email & Cell Phone

4 Comments

WRAL.com welcomes your comments on this story. All comments are moderated prior to publication based on our posting guidelines. Please review them prior to posting and if your message is not approved.

4 COMMENTS

This story is closed for comments. Comments on WRAL.com news stories are accepted and moderated between the hours of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Latest Comments

I am very pleased by this news. I feared the cemetery might be lost.

nc creature
February 21, 2013 11:38 a.m.

morrigan - yes, that is the same cemetery that you are thinking of (only the building was the ywca, not the ymca).

archmaker
February 19, 2013 4:50 p.m.

Very cool. It's about time. Most people don't even know it is there.

Keep Dreaming
February 19, 2013 3:08 p.m.

Question for longtime residents: is this near the YMCA that is/was on Oberlin Rd? When I first moved here, I noticed a small graveyard near the parking lot, but as cemeteries are quite commonly small plots (as opposed to up North, IDK why), thought no more about it.

Terkel
February 19, 2013 3:08 p.m.

4 COMMENTS