Morning Coffee at Hollywood Cemetery

This morning included dropping off my husband at work. Since his office is just down the street from Hollywood Cemetery, I couldn’t resist a detour. With my travel mug of coffee, my yogurt for breakfast, and my journal, I headed down the road, telling myself that I was going to wait out the morning traffic before heading home.

I made my way to one of the overlooks perched above the James River, where the sound of water and the steady hum of cicadas offered a loud, living backdrop. It was one of those perfect early summer mornings, humid but not too hot, buzzing with life, and full of stories waiting to be discovered. There were some fallen limbs and leaves from last night’s storms, and the grass was heavy with morning dew that soaked through my shoes as I walked. I didn't mind, though. 

After journaling, I wandered into some parts of the cemetery that I rarely make time to explore when I'm giving guided tours. There’s something so different about visiting a place without a plan, just letting the place guide your way. 

This morning, they led me to the Crenshaw plot not far from President’s Circle, where I caught a delicate and distinct fragrance on the breeze: the Musk Rose, or Rosa moschata. This particular rose is something special. Once believed to be extinct, the Musk Rose was rediscovered right here in the Crenshaw plot some years ago. Since then, it’s been found in other locations, all tied to the same family. Thanks to the foresight of folks like Connie at Hartwood Roses, cuttings were taken, and the rose now grows in nurseries and gardens, safe from vanishing again. You can read more about its journey on her blog: hartwoodroses.blogspot.com.

This morning, the bush held only two blooms. This rose bush is unique for having two different types of flowers. Apparently, one form is a mutation of the other. It’s a rare and lovely thing to see in person (but mostly to smell!), and even more special knowing its story.

As I was getting ready to head out, I ran into two women walking through the cemetery, sisters with one visiting from Savannah, Georgia. Naturally, the conversation turned to cemeteries. We chatted all things Savannah: Bonaventure Cemetery, the infamous Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and the meandering paths of Colonial Park that cut through the city. We even touched on Laurel Grove Cemetery, the final resting place of Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts. I love Savannah cemeteries, but you just cannot beat the breeze of the river, which helps keep those pesky gnats away. I bought a mesh head net for the next time I visit Savannah.   

I gave the sisters a quick impromptu tour of Presidents Circle and pointed out John Tyler and James Monroe, the Lloyd family plot (What happened to Frank? If you are familiar with the grave, you know what I'm talking about), and, of course, I had to introduce them to the Musk Rose before parting ways.

There’s something incredibly grounding about mornings like this, feet wet with dew, cicadas singing, unexpected conversations blooming among the graves. History isn’t just in books or plaques; it’s in the plants, the stones, the people you meet, and the stories you pass along.

And sometimes, it starts with a cup of coffee and a slight change in your morning routine. 

For those who couldn't get out to the cemetery this morning, here's a short video of part of my morning stroll. 

Rain, Eagles, and Brokedown Palace: A Morning at Hollywood Cemetery

This morning, I headed out under cloudy skies for Meandering the Markers, a 90-minute writing and reflection workshop I hosted at Hollywood Cemetery. Designed as a space for creative and contemplative exploration, the session invites participants to tune in—to the stories etched in stone, the quiet around them, and their own inner landscape. 

Even with the steady rain, one dedicated participant showed up, notepad in hand. We moved our chairs beneath the shelter of Palmer Chapel, a beautiful spot overlooking the James River. From there, we could see two bald eagles perched on the large rocks in the middle of the river. I wished for binoculars—my phone’s zoom wasn’t enough to fully capture the moment—but their presence was unmistakable and grounding. 

As we sat with the sound of rain and river, she spoke about music that moves her, the kind of songs that stay with you like old friends. 

After the session, we walked together to find the grave of someone she knew. 

On our way back, we paused in front of a headstone inscribed with the words: 

"Going home, going home 

By the waterside I will rest my bones

Listen to the river sing sweet songs 

to rock my soul."

The lyrics were perfectly suited for the place. What poem was this? I wasn't familiar. 

I looked it up when I got home and smiled—lyrics from Brokedown Palace by the Grateful Dead. It felt like everything had come together in quiet harmony: the eagles, the river, the rain, the music, and memory. 

The poem this morning wasn’t just something we wrote—it was something we witnessed. 

Sometimes, poetry finds us when we least expect it. It rises in the rhythm of conversation, in shared silence, or on the wings of birds sitting by the water. Sometimes, it’s carved in stone, waiting for someone to pause long enough to read it. And sometimes, it’s all of these things at once.

Writer Sarah A. Brock Putnam buried in Hollywood Cemetery (Richmond, Va)

From American Women

 (1893), p. 590.

When I published my research on Women Writers Buried in Virginia, I dedicated the book to the women writers buried in Virginia cemeteries whom I have not yet discovered. 

I’m glad that I keep discovering them. There are twenty-three cemeteries represented in the book. The majority includes one or two women writers buried there with two exceptions—“Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, which has twelve women writers interred, and Arlington National Cemetery, which has five” (15). Make that a lucky 13 for Hollywood Cemetery. 

When reading Mary Tardy’s 1872 The Living Female Writers of the South, I overlooked Miss Sallie A. Brock, who often published under the pseudonym Virginia Madison. Born on March 18. 1831 as Sarah Ann Brock in Madison Court House, Brock went by the name Sallie. She was tutored at home by her father and later by governesses. Her family moved to the University of Virginia where Brock lived for eight years before the family moved to Richmond in 1858 where she devoted her studies to oil-painting and writing. Within a few years, Brock’s dreams of becoming an authoress would be put on hold due to the Civil War. 

After the war, Brock moved to New York to work around other writers. In 1869, her collection of poems from Southern poets, The Southern Amaranth, was published to benefit the Ladies’ Memorial Association, organized groups of southern white women who sought out the bodies of their fathers, uncles, brothers and cousins who were Confederate soldiers who had fallen in war and whose bodies were left in fields and made arrangements for their bodies to be interred in cemeteries. From 1869-1870, Brock traveled Europe where her letters were published. 

Brock wrote editorials, historical articles, essays, biographies, poetry, and a novel. She is best remembered for her memoir, Richmond During the War: Four Years of Personal Observation (1867), which was published “by a Richmond Lady.” Brock even references Hollywood Cemetery within her memoir. Her only published novel, Kenneth, My King (1873) described as “A romance set in the American South patterned after Jane Eyre, about an intelligent young woman who is unmarried and left to fend for herself.” The novel was poorly reviewed but that did not stop me from clicking purchase on a first edition copy that I found online. 

On January 11, 1882, Brock married a minister, Richard Fletcher Putnam who was also a member of the Boston publishing family. They lived in New York and Connecticut. While she continued to contribute to magazines and wrote novels, her focus had changed from writing to family. She attended the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 that was held in Chicago where she participated with other Virginia authors. 

On March 22, 1911, she passed and is buried in Hollywood Cemetery next to her husband who died five years before her. 

 

Richmond Times-Dispatch

 Richmond, Virginia, March 23, 1911, p 2.

Works referenced: 

Driggs, Sarah, and Dictionary of Virginia Biography. "Sarah Ann Brock (1831–1911)" Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, (07 Dec. 2020). Web. 15 Jun. 2023 

Tardy, Mary. The Living Female Writers of the South. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger, 1872, 404-408.

The grave of Narcissa Owen- memoirist, artist, and "Indian Princess"

On the Spring Hill Cemetery website under “Notables,” Narcissa C. Owen (183l-1911) is listed as "’The Indian Princess’ who lived at Point of Honor during the Civil War.” She is also listed as an “artist and the daughter of Thomas Chisholm, the last hereditary Chief of the Western Cherokees [as well as the] wife of Robert Latham Owen, Sr.”  After visiting her grave, I did some research and learned that she wrote Memoirs of Narcissa Owen, 1831-1907, published in 1907.[1] She also was a prominent voice in woman suffrage and the rights of Cherokee people. [2]

While she was a memoirist, she identified as a portrait artist and her most notable works include a notable a self-portrait, and Thomas Jefferson and His Descendants.[3] Her interest in Jefferson was an association with her father, Thomas Chisholm, who received the silver Peace and Friendship medal in recognition of being the last hereditary war chief of the Cherokees from Jefferson in 1808.[4]

Graves of husband and her son.

Born on October 3, 1831 to Thomas Chisholm and Malinda Wharton, Narcissa was the youngest of four children. She was the direct descent of Queen Quatisis, “the lineal successor of the seven original chiefs of Cherokee blood.”^[5]

Young Narcissa did not have the easiest upbringing. Her father died in 1834 and her mother was unable to care for all four children so her siblings were sent away to school. She remained with her mother for two years before she was also sent away.[6] When she was nearly 11 years old, she moved in with her older sister. She would go on to a women’s college in Indiana and then attend Miss Sawyer’s Female Seminary in Fayetteville, Arkansas.[7]

The Caney News, (Caney, Kansas: July 21, 1911).

She married her husband Robert Latham Owen, a descendant of George Washington on October 4, 1853, a day after her nineteenth birthday.[8] And since it sometimes feels like all roads lead to Richmond, Charles Dimmock, the architect who designed Hollywood Cemetery’s 90-foot pyramid that was erected in December 1868, was one of the groomsmen at their wedding.[9] This is a complete aside but while researching Narcissa Owen and then falling down a rabbit hole about Charles Dimmock, I learned that the Hollywood Memorial Association sent him to monitor the exhumation of the Southern remains in the Gettysburg battlefield. It was his report about the horrid conditions and desecration of the graves by farmers that recommended that the bodies be moved to Hollywood.[10]  

By the Civil War, Narcissa Owen and her family were living in Lynchburg. Along with five hundred other Lynchburg ladies, she helped provide young recruits with uniforms and hospital supplies. When there weren’t jobs enough jobs for sewing and earning an income, Narcissa Owen collected money from wealthier families to provide for the wives and children of Lynchburg’s soldiers.[11]

In June 1873, her husband passed away. Her son, Robert Latham Owen, Jr. and she moved to the Cherokee Nation. She was offered a position to teach in the Cherokee Female Seminary in 1880 and continued in the position until 1884.

Memoirs of Narcissa Owen, 1907

Although she was always interested in art, she began to focus on learning perspective and oil colors after she left her teaching position.

In 1907, she published her memoirs and then passed away a few years later on July 11, 1911. She was 80 years old.[12]

 

Epitaph of her son

---

[1] Narcissa Owen, Memoirs of Narcissa Owen, 1831-1907, 1907, The place of publication is not identified. Amherst College Digital Collections, Archives & Special Collections, https://acdc.amherst.edu/view/asc:788769/asc:788826

[2] “Mrs. Owen Was Indian Princess,” The Poteau News, (Poteau, Oklahoma: July 20, 1911)2.

[3] Stacie Boston, “Owen's Life Consisted of Love for Art, Music and Her People.” Cherokee Phoenix, March 4, 2021. https://www.cherokeephoenix.org/culture/owen-s-life-consisted-of-love-for-art-music-and-her-people/article_caaf7e08-7cf9-11eb-8e2e-fff0b25be0df.html.

[4] Janet Shaffer. "Narcissa and Robert Owen: The Point of Honor Years." The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 89, no. 2 (1981): 166.

[5] The Caney News, (Caney, Kansas: July 21, 1911).

[6] Shaffer, 155.

[7] Shaffer, 156.

[8] Shaffer, 157.

[9] Shaffer, 156.

[10] Adrienne E. Robertson,"Charles Henry Dimmock (1831–1873)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia, published 2015.

[11] Shaffer, 159.

[12] Shaffer, 167.