red river sankofa project

Olivewood Cemetery

Olivewood Cemetery - 3000 Hicks St - Houston, TX 77007 - Neighborhood: - The Heights

Olivewood Cemetery, in Houston, Texas, lies near a bend in White Oak Bayou, along the rail line to Chaney Junction, where the First and Sixth wards meet just northwest of downtown. The 6-acre (24,000 m2) cemetery is an historic resting place for many freed slaves and some of Houston’s earliest black residents. In 1875, the land, which had previously been used for slave burials, was purchased by Richard Brock, Houston's first black alderman. It opened as a cemetery for black Methodists in 1877. When Olivewood was platted, it was the first African-Americans burial ground within the Houston city limits. Many 19th century influential African-Americans were buried in the cemetery, including Reverend Elias Dibble, first minister of Trinity United Methodist Church; Reverend Wade H. Logan, also a minister of the church; and James Kyle, a blacksmith; as well as Richard Brock. The cemetery includes more than 700 family plots around a graceful, elliptical drive that originated at an ornate entry gate. It contains graves of both the well-to-do and those who died in poverty; therefore, the grave markers run the gamut from elaborate Victorian monuments to simple, handmade headstones. Burials at Olivewood Cemetery continued through the 1960s.

Nestled against a bend of White Oak Bayou, and surrounded by rich Houston history, lies Olivewood, the city’s first incorporated African American cemetery. It’s been a jungle for years - the headstones have been literally buried under massive carpets of vegetation. Extending over an estimated 8 acres, only the front quarter of the cemetery had been successfully cleared of the seemingly endless tropical abundance including poison ivy and oak. For a long time, only the larger mortuary architecture rising above the undergrowth has hinted at Olivewood’s location.

Descendants of Olivewood, Inc. is dedicated to the reclamation of this cemetery for the benefit of the present and future generations of Houston. We are committed to restoring, preserving and maintaining Olivewood Cemetery as a historic, educational, charitable, religious and cultural site of importance.

Pictures provided by George Alvin Allen (Bradford)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

• Related topics

• • Cemetery records
  • Family names
  • Marriage records
  • Plantation records
  • Red River Contributors
  • Slaveowners

•