, 1, 2, is that better . My name is dave jackson. I have a great privilege of serving as superintendent at oak hill cemetery. I am in my fifth year. My predecessor was there for 28. I do not think i will be there that long, but i will be, but not as superintendent. Thats another story. [laughter] mr. Jackson i wanted to talk about oak hill and its history and how it came to pass. I want to invite you to visit oak hill. The best way to experience oak hill is to come and visit. Our price is right, unless you make longer arrangements. It is really quite a place to see. Hope the late today, you will learn a little bit more about it and why it is there. And you will see even more on the fifth of november when we tour around the place of it. So, as mentioned, this is a picture of the main gate at 30th and r street. Before i talk about that to my want to explain a bit about the Garden Movement of the cemetery and how it began. In about 1820, late 1820s or certainly 1830s, there was a group in boston, cambridge really, who started the first of the cemeteries who really started the romantic or the Garden Cemetery movement at mount auburn cemetery. The reason that that happened was that our society in general recognized that the old concept of the churchyard graveyard, or church graveyards, was becoming unworkable. They were becoming crowded, there was development around them, and it was a need to look at cemeteries and how we commemorate those who are passed in a different way. There were a group of gentlemen who put together mount auburn cemetery, it is about one to or acres. 150 it is quite large. They started a movement of Cemetery Development that went up and down the east coast into the midwest. The idea was a large area that had open spaces that were landscaped to one extent or another that utilized monuments as art and gave a place, in those days in the 19 century, for families to celebrate the lives of those who had passed. It was common in 19 century for families to visit on sundays, visit the family plot. They would bring a blanket and picnic and those things. They would all gather at the family plot. Certainly at mount auburn, also oak hill. There were other cemeteries that sprang up as part of this movement. Greenlawn, im sorry, green hood, a large one in philadelphia, Hollywood Cemetery down in richmond. Cave hill in louisville, there is one in st. Louis, another in cincinnati, cleveland. They sprung up all over the country from the 1830s or 1880s timeframe as that concept for cemeteries. If you visit one of those cities, without now that i know youre interested in cemeteries, and you look for one of those historic cemeteries, go and visit it. There are all interesting. Theyre all very pleasant spaces to be in. Oak hill, i show this picture not only to say this is the entry in probably the way you are mostly familiar with. This is the main gate. Those pillars where the gates are my look familiar to you guys there are a similar set of three just south of the castle. It turns out these were originally at the smithsonian. For whatever reason they were rejected and which of them. And we took them. They were a renwick design. They were recreated. The ones of south of the castle were put in place. They are the same material that was used extensively in washington construction in the 19th century. A local quarry of the potomac river. It was used extensively, that is the stone on these pillars. It was also used to trim a couple of the buildings in the cemetery. The Smithsonian Castle is this red sandstone. When you go by, you will see our gate. There is looking at it from the other side, a gatehouse behind it. You can see an little bit of that sandstone trim on the gatehouse here and some other places, but not in this picture. When you come in there is a sign that says welcome in here is what you can and cannot do. I guess all places have that. When you think about oak hill, what happened was this is william corcoran. He was a Great Washington philanthropist and made his first money financing the mexicanamerican war in the 1840s. His first large philanthropic project in washington was oak hill cemetery. He came up in 1849 and he bought 15 acres of land from Martha Washington descendents and he hired an engineer to lay the cemetery out and design an extensive drainage system. He hired the architect to design the chapel. It so happened that at that same period of time, he had bought a house unlawfully at square that was about 40 years old. Daniel webster lived there before him. He hired the architect to do that project on his house. I have a feeling there was a conversation between the two of them that went Something Like, by the way james, would you please design this Little Chapel for the cemetery project . And of course he said yes. What he designed was a very, gothic revival style building , but mr. Corcoran was our founder. I will finish a story. The other thing he did was he went to congress. In those days, the business of the district was done in the u. S. Congress. He had a notforprofit and a charter, and he donated land and all the improvements for the notforprofit entity. We have operated that way for 167 years. I work for a board of four volunteers, all of who have an interest in the cemetery. We have about six generations at oak hill. All of those folks have one interest or another in the cemetery. But mr. Corcoran started it. He was our great benefactor. This is a map, and you cannot see anything on it, i understand that, it is to detail. But i want to point out a couple things. Just to orient you here we go that is r street now, that is where the main gate is now come at 30th. The back order is a long the creek. When you drive Rock Creek Park way and you look up and see the cemetery, you looking up along this area here and looking at the area right of this corner of the cemetery. Then to further orient you, the house backs up to that spot. Q street is here. Then the estate is here at 28 in this area. Dumbarton house here, 30th street and another entry here. It has the same pillars, the red sandstone pillars, but the main entry is here. When mr. Corcoran first bought land, he only bought about 15 acres. The border of which was probably right about here. Then about 10 years later, the family who owned at that point the davidsons, they fell on hard times. They sold their land which extended back here. Another 10 acres. Now we have about 25 acres over about the first eight or 10 years of the cemeterys life. Today there is about 19,600 souls buried there. We average 45 or 50 burials a year. Either casket burials or cremation burials. This is the elipse entry. This is the chapel. Im going to show you a lot more pictures of that area. This handsome gentlemen, i like his hairline. It is James Renwick jr. I think this is a later picture, but he was only about 30th this point. 30 years old at this point. He was the fellow who designed our chapel. Now, the materials on that, i would just touch briefly on. The instructions to him were they wanted a nondenominational structure. That is what it is. But he was very careful to select some materials that had to friend meanings and different religions. For instance, the purple roof, it is Vermont Purple slate, purple has different meanings in different religions. Same thing with the red sandstone. That is what the trim pieces are here. This is a blue granite called gneisse. It came from another quarry up river, i think on the virginia side. But he selected those colors for a reason, and there are also shapes within the interior of the chapel that also mean Different Things across different religions. I guess im in my fifth winter, and every time a season comes around i am not a great photographer but i start walking outside and seeing things, and you start taking pictures of everything. I have a million pictures of Different Things. I will show you Different Things about the chapel. I will come back to this in a few minutes. But you can see how striking this Little Chapel is. That is the back. Very striking stainedglass angel in the back that is shown here. And then on the inside, you can see how that angel lights up. The pictures do not do this place justice, but it is quite striking. We just did a fairly extensive restoration project on this building about three years ago. When you come on november 5, i am going to tell you stories about that. I am not going to go into that extensively today, but hopefully im giving you a look. It was quite interesting to do. The cornerstone in the chapel is 1850. Took three years to build. As i say, the materials and some of the shapes of the windows and so forth i do not mean to do that the shades of the windows and so forth were designed to be nondenominational. We do have some christian things in the front that we take out from time to time if necessary. We still use the building for cemeteries. We have Community Association meetings in those things from time to time. We do a wedding in there occasionally. We still use it just as much as we possibly can. That is the altar just below the stainedglass window. It was a nice picture. When you stand at the altar and turn around and look back out the door, that is what you see. And one of the things that is also prominent when you come into the cemetery, which is right there, is this statute. You will not be able to read the name of that statute, but this is a statue of john howard pain, who wrote a song in the 19th century called home sweet home. It was part of a play that he wrote in the 1820s were 1830s, and it was a song from the play. It became tremendously popular in the 19th century. So much so that it was sung during the civil war. The troops saying it. It finally got to a point where the general on both sides discouraged the troops from singing it. Because if they did a lot of people would wake up and there would be a whole a lot of deserters who went home. So, the generals would not let them sing. Payne did a lot of things, not only a playwright, and actor, a writer, but he was appointed counsel general for the United States to Northern Africa and he served in tunisia for many years, and he died in the late 1850s, i believe. He was buried in tunisia. This statue was put up in his honor. About 1880, our friend mr. Corcoran thought that his remains should be at oak hill cemetery. He made arrangements to ship, to exhume the body, ship the remains and the statue back to the United States. There was a story in the New York Times at the time that said that paynes casket came in and stayed in the Newark City Hall for a week. Tens of thousands of people came by to pay their respects. The next step was, it was brought to washington. It was set in what we know as the Renwick Gallery today. There were tens of thousands who came to pay their respects. When the time came to reinter his remains, there was an event put together, and it was Something Like 3000 people who came to the event, and it included the president and Congress Members and congressional members and Supreme Court justices. John sousas band played. The neighborhood was jammed. It was quite an event to do this reinterment of his remains. If you think about it, he was really a rockstar of the 19th century. We are very proud that he is part of this entry feature at oak hill. That was done in 1883. There is part of what happened at that point in conjunction with that event that ties the chapel, and im not going to tell you about that today. Youre going to have to come in november to hear about it. But that was a great event for oak hill. Another feature, there is mr. Paynes statue again. Somewhere, somebody when the statue was originally done, it showed payne with a beard. It got here and mr. Corcoran said i never knew him with a beard, take it off. So, he does not have a beard here. What mr. Corcoran wanted, he always got. That is why there is no beard. The other gentleman honored is wayne pygmy, who is a wellknown clergy person in the midatlantic area. He was an episcopal cleric who was very well thought of and did a lot of things in this area. As a matter of fact, he presided at the event honoring john payne. Unfortunately he died a week later. He was another good friend of mr. Corcoran, so he had the statue put in place to honor the reverend. This is a picture of the gatehouse. If you remember when you driving at 30th street, on the left is a gatehouse. This is the gatehouse. My guess on this is that this is about 1900 or so. I am saying that because this section back here, which is the kitchen, was added in the 1890s. The gatehouse was built for the superintendent and his family to live in from the getgo. The office of the cemetery is in the lower floor in the front right here. The rest of it was living quarters for the cemetery. My wife and i and our cats and dog live there. It is great. It is living in an old house, but it is really great. The neighbors are quiet. [laughter] it has just been a real joy to live in the community and be there all the time. I am asked from time to time, do you ever see a ghost . And the answer to that is no. I think the reason for that is, other than the circumstances of death or religious belief, i think everyone who is at oak hill is happy. What better place could they be . So, no, we do not ever see anything like that. Now, this is looking at the gatehouse from inside, kind of the back of the house. I think this is probably in the 1920s or 1930s. We do not have air conditioning although we do have air windows, plumbing, electrical. This is probably one of those sunday afternoon things where a group of folks out here taking life easy and being in a very pleasant space in the cemetery. In the back of the house, at that point it is not changed at all. There is a bell that rings every hour on the hour every day between 9 00 and 5 00. It resides in this tower. It did not work for a while. I got it back on and the neighbors came inside. Everybody was excited about that. Every once in a while. I try to take a nap in the room right there. I can take a one hour nap. A nap until 2 01, and when the bell goes off at 3 00, you dont have any choice. You get up. The flooring and so forth is original. It is mostly original. We are going to have some drawings in short order. We are going to record as much of the original conditions of the house as possible and over the next few years or so we will do some renovation upgrading to some extent. I do not know how much yet, but we are starting down that path. When you walk around in the cemetery, there are several monuments that are significant, and i like to talk about some of these. And maybe, if there is some significance to the monument. This piece of stone is probably about 12 feet tall. You can see the angel image in it. This is for the Spencer Family, and sam spencer was president of the railways at the turn of the century, and he passed at 1906. The headquarters was here in d. C. After he passed, the headquarters was moved to new york in the family went up there. All of the family members who have passed since then are brought back down, and there are new markers for them individually made of a similar style and size and so forth. We call that a ledger stone, that lays flat on the ground. But in 1927 or so, the Spencer Family had this stone commissioned by tiffany. And my historian friends tell me they have not seen another tiffany stone in a cemetery like this. But if you look on the backside of the stone, there is the little tiffaniy symbol you see on jewelry. It is quite a unique piece, as far as cemeteries and tiffany goe. I sort of think the stone was put in place and that the artist came and did a lot of the work onsite. That would still be a large piece of stone to handle during that timeframe. It was probably in the 1927 to 1928 when it was done. Now, this young fellow is willy lincoln. Willy lincoln was the middle child, middle son, of the lincolns. He passed away in 1862, in february of 1862 of yellow fever. At the time of his passing, there was a family whose last name was caroll, who had just recently completed a cave mausoleum. If you remember from my map, the northern border of the cemetery runs near the creek. It looks out over the creek. There is a row of these cave mazza mausoleums built over there. When he passed, it was the plan that he would return to illinois when abe finished his service. The story was there was a large funeral in a church near the white house. After the funeral, the hearse brought the casket over oak hill, and there was another shorter service in our chapel. And mrs. Lincoln was too overcome in order to tend to the second ceremony. But mr. Lincoln and robert, the oldest son, and some other close family people did come. And then the casket was taken down and put into the carol family mausoleum, which is right there. And then, the story goes further. This boy was really mourned by both of his parents. From time to time, a blank in would get on a horse from time to time, abe lincoln would get on a horse and ride down to oak hill and sith with the boy. This happened on several occasions. I do not have a picture of this, but i am told after the assassination, you know there was a long train procession that went through a large part of our country with the flag draped casket of abe lincoln on a rail car. I am told there is a picture that shows that casket and a much smaller flag draped casket next to it, which was willy. Now, theres another piece to that story that you are going to have to come on november 5 and hear as well. [laughter] now, this greekstyle structure is a family mausoleum. On this side it says eustis. On the other side it says corcoran. That is the corcoran family mausoleum. There is a crypt under that structure where the caskets go. It is corcoran on this side and eustis on the other side. There is only one child that became an adult. Mr. Corcoran certainly has a significant structure within our cemetery. It is quite pretty. And as i say, sits also overlooking the creek. Van ness, john john van ness, he was the 10th mayor of washington dc they lost a young daughter in the 1820s or 1830s. This building was erected, i believe it was on 9th street. And her remains were put there. And the rights to the building over a couple of generati