Virginia Department of Historic Resources Virginia Department of Historic Resources
For additional information, read the Nomination Form PDF
VLR Listing Date 12/18/2008
NRHP Listing Date 03/20/2009
NRHP Reference Number 09000163
Chartered in 1844 and laid out on a gently rolling field with clusters of trees, shrubs, and winding, picturesque drives, Mount Hebron Cemetery, designed by Glaswegian gardener John William Kater, is the oldest and largest public cemetery still operating in the city of Winchester and is believed to be Virginia’s earliest large cemetery influenced by the Rural Cemetery Movement. Nestled around the ruins of the city’s first Lutheran church and a number of elegant tombs are 30,000 graves including those of Revolutionary War hero Gen. Daniel Morgan, noted Confederate Gen. Turner Ashby, Winchester’s greatest benefactor Judge John Handley, the millionaire merchant and philanthropist Charles Broadway Rouss, and Virginia governors Frederick W. M. Holliday and Harry F. Byrd. Founded adjacent to two of the town’s oldest church cemeteries, the German Reformed Church Cemetery (1741) and the Lutheran Church Cemetery (1753), Mount Hebron still contains the graves of their founders and clergy. The 56-acre cemetery, expanded to its present size in 1938, also includes Stonewall Confederate Memorial Cemetery, established in 1866 (on the site of the Third Battle of Winchester) and likely the first cemetery in the South exclusively dedicated to the re-interment of Confederate soldiers; it also contains one of the earliest American monuments to unidentified Civil War soldiers, erected in 1879. Mount Hebron’s Gatehouse, one of only two buildings in the Shenandoah Valley designed by master architects Barney and Chapman of New York, embodies an unusual adaptation of local “bluestone” (limestone) into the Chateauesque architectural style. Local builder Henry Deahl was contracted to construct the gatehouse in 1902. Maintained as the superintendent’s home, the gatehouse changed little until a 1956 decision converted the chapel into an office.
Many properties listed in the registers are private dwellings and are not open to the public, however many are visible from the public right-of-way. Please be respectful of owner privacy.
Abbreviations:
VLR: Virginia Landmarks Register
NPS: National Park Service
NRHP: National Register of Historic Places
NHL: National Historic Landmark
Updated: November 18, 2021
