Mount Holly Cemetery

Mount Holly Cemetery
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Mount Holly Cemetery
Location	12th St. and Broadway, Little Rock, Arkansas
Coordinates	34°44′17″N 92°16′44″W / 34.73806°N 92.27889°WCoordinates: 34°44′17″N 92°16′44″W / 34.73806°N 92.27889°W
Built	1843
NRHP Reference #	70000125[1]
Added to NRHP	March 5th, 1970

Mount Holly Cemetery is the original cemetery in the Quapaw Quarter area of downtown Little Rock, Arkansas, United States, and is the burial place for numerous Arkansans of note. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has been nicknamed "The Westminster Abbey of Arkansas".

The cemetery is the burial place for 10 former Governors of Arkansas, 6 United States Senators, 14 Arkansas Supreme Court Justices, 21 Little Rock Mayors, numerous Arkansas literary figures, Confederate Generals, and other worthies. Some of the notables buried at Mount Holly are:

• Dale Alford – U.S. Representative from 1959–1963 and noted ophthalmologist
• Dr. James A. Dibrell—founder, Dean, and Professor of the University of Arkansas Medical School from 1886 to 1904. President of the Arkansas State Medical Society. Vice President of the American Medical Association in 1902.
• David Owen Dodd – boy martyr of the Confederacy
• Sanford Faulkner – the original 'Arkansas Traveller'
• John Gould Fletcher – Pulitzer Prize–winning poet
• William Savin Fulton – Governor of Arkansas Territory 1835–1836, U.S. senator from Arkansas 1836–1844
• George Izard – US Army major general, Governor of Arkansas Territory 1825–1828
• Quatie Ross – the wife of Cherokee Chief John Ross
• Frank D. White – governor of Arkansas from 1981 to 1983
• William E. Woodruff – founder of the former Arkansas Gazette

There are also several slaves who are buried there, marked by extremely modest gravestones.

Every year in October several drama students from Parkview Arts and Science Magnet High School are each given a person buried in the cemetery to research. They then prepare short monologues or dialogues, complete with period costumes, to be performed in front of the researched person's grave. Audiences are led through the cemetery from grave to grave by guides with candles. The event is called "Tales of the Crypt". Although it takes place around the same time as the American holiday Halloween, the event is meant to be historic rather than spooky.

The cemetery experienced heavy vandalism in the overnight hours of April 20, 2016. Numerous headstones were toppled and smashed, including the well-known statues of a mourner next to statues of two little girls.^[2]

See also

• National Register of Historic Places listings in Little Rock, Arkansas

References

1. National Park Service (2010-07-09). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
2. Koon, David. "Vandals strike Mt. Holly Cemetery, severely damage several monuments and statues". Retrieved 27 July 2016.