Faith & Burial in Early Alexandria: How Church and Conscience Shaped the City's Burial Grounds

Before Alexandria had cemeteries, it had convictions. This volume traces how the Anglican establishment, the fight for religious freedom, and the founding of dissenting congregations determined where the city's dead were laid to rest — from garden-plot burials in the 1750s through the yellow fever epidemic that created the Wilkes Street Cemetery Complex.

Three burial grounds receive full treatment: the Quaker Burial Ground on Queen Street, where Dr. Elisha Cullen Dick — the physician at George Washington's deathbed — lies beneath the lawn of a public library; Trinity United Methodist Church Cemetery, the historic 1808 ground holding a ratifier of the U.S. Constitution, eight Revolutionary War veterans, and the man behind Alexandria's famous Spite House; and Home of Peace, Virginia's oldest Jewish cemetery, with the merchants, mayors, and families of the city's 19th-century Jewish community.

Illustrated throughout with gravestone photographs and historic images, with inscriptions transcribed as carved and an annotated map of Old Town's burial sites.

Digital PDF edition • 38 pages • By David Heiby • Published by Gravestone Stories, 2026.