Oak Hill Cemetery

COURTESY OF THE WATKINS MUSEUM OF HISTORY

The history of Lawrence is evident in many places across the city, but perhaps none richer and more memorable than the grounds of Oak Hill Cemetery, established in 1865 on a 40-acre plot in part to provide a proper final resting place for those who had died in Quantrill’s Raid two years earlier.

In 2017, a small group of citizens led by Shannon Hodges, concerned about years of deterioration of the grounds, monuments and markers, formed the Friends of Oak Hill Cemetery and began working with the city’s Parks and Recreation Department on cleaning up the cemetery. 

The group incorporated in 2019 and began cleanup efforts, but its work recently has accelerated after completing a merger—facilitated by LPA Board member Sarah Bishop of Coneflower Consulting—with the Douglas County Historical Society. Now the DCHS Oak Hill Cemetery Programing Committee is making transformational headway in bringing the cemetery back to a level the community can be proud of.

Oak Hill uses a Rural Cemetery design that was a popular movement in the East but still cutting-edge in the Midwest when Holland Wheeler, the county surveyor and later city engineer, laid out the first plat in 1868. Wheeler continued to be a principal figure at the cemetery until his death in 1920. The Rural Cemetery design emphasized retaining natural landscape features such as rolling hillsides and mature trees, with meandering roadways provided for access. Expansions in 1886 and 1918 stayed true to that design.

Historic Resources Administrator Lynne Zollner wrote a nomination for the cemetery to the Lawrence Register of Historic Places in 2016. City and state funds were then combined to fund a National Register nomination, written by Julia Manglitz, which won approval for listing in 2017.

COURTESY OF THE WATKINS MUSEUM OF HISTORY

Friends of Oak Hill Cemetery began with a goal of fundraising for restoration efforts, promoting greater community awareness, and coordinating volunteer hands-on opportunities for grounds cleanup and marker preservation. Last October, the Oak Hill Cemetery Program Committee began working in partnership with Pacific Coast Conservation (PCC), based in Colorado and led by Lucinda Linderman. 

Funded by City of Lawrence Capital Improvement Plan funds, a grant from the Douglas County Heritage Conservation Council, and private donations raised by the committee, PCC is concentrating its efforts on marker preservation for Quantrill’s victims as well as repair of broken headstones or those categorized as unsafe or unstable. This PCC work is complemented by monthly Sunday workdays, when Programming  Committee members work alongside community volunteers to clean select stones and markers.

Interested volunteers can email Watkins Museum staffer and Programming Committee spokesperson Natalie Vondrack at nvondrak@watkinsmuseum.org. LPA thanks go out to committee chair Rosalea Postma-Carttar and committee members Denise Pettengill, Leslie Beesley, Grace Aubrey, Peter Carttar, Kerry Altenbernd and Kathryn Nemeth-Tuttle for their dedicated work.