Welcome to the Daughters of Zion Cemetery.
The Daughters of Zion Cemetery was established in 1873 by a benevolent organization
of African American women known as the Daughters of Zion who purchased an
approximate two-acre plot for African American burials located across from the
segregated Oakwood Cemetery. Ground-penetrating radar surveys revealed that the
cemetery now owned by the City of Charlottesville contains hundreds of unmarked
graves. It serves as one of the few remaining links to the post-bellum segregated society
of Virginia and evidence of the vital community role of Reconstruction-era African
American mutual aid societies. This marker was erected by the Charlottesville Historic
Resources Committee.
There are many remarkable individuals buried in this historic African American
cemetery. For example, this is the final resting place of Reverend M. T. Lewis who came
to Charlottesville in 1873 to serve as pastor of the Delevan Baptist Church, a church that
organized in 1863 when African American members of the majority white First Baptist
Church decided to break away to form Charlottesville’s first independent African
American church. The newly formed congregation initially worshiped in the Delevan
Hotel that once served as a hospital during the civil war. During Reverend Lewis’ tenure,
the old Delevan Hotel was torn down, and the present church, now known as First
Baptist Church West Main, was constructed on the same site. Sadly, Reverend Lewis
died at the young age of forty, a year before the church was completed. Like several
others buried at the Daughters of Zion Cemetery, Reverend Lewis was a member of the
Jefferson Lodge, a group of African American Free Masons that was established in
Charlottesville in 1870.
Benjamin E. Tonsler is also buried here. Mr. Tonsler was first a student and then a
teacher before eventually becoming the first principal of the Jefferson Graded School
for nearly thirty years. Mr. Tonsler was a graduate of Hampton Institute now Hampton
University and a friend of Booker T. Washington, so it is not surprising he advocated the
importance of education to the local African American population. He was an active
member of the First Baptist Church and an officer of the Piedmont Industrial and Land
Improvement Company. The city park in Charlottesville’s Fifeville neighborhood, just
blocks from his family home on Sixth Street, S.W., is named in his honor.
In 2010 the Daughters of Zion Cemetery was listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register
and the National Register of Historic Places. We hope you will visit the cemetery and
will take time to learn more about the fascinating people who are buried here.
