Search Alabama Death Records

•  Alabama Newspapers, Full Search (1813-2018), 150 titles
•  Alabama Obituary Search, (1824-current)
•  Alabama Birth Records Database, (1813-1999)

 

Hillside Cemetery Records
Anniston, Calhoun County, Alabama

GPS: 33.657852, -85.817590

Highland Ave & 10th Street
Anniston, AL

Hillside Cemetery
PO Box 670
Anniston, AL 36202

Published: May 5, 2016
Total records: 12

Hillside Cemetery is administered by the City of Anniston, Public Works Department. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

History

Hillside Cemetery is significant for its illustration of "welfare capitalism" that was espoused by many industrialists, both north and south, during the second half of the 19th century. The cemetery, designed by N. F. Barrett, noted landscape architect who assisted in the design of the company town of Pullman, Illinois, was originally prepared for the workers of the Woodstock Iron Company. The cemetery is indicative of the attitude of the company founders, Samuel Noble and David Tyler, that their workers be provided the necessities of life, including provisions for burial.

Hillside Cemetery is significant for its display of funerary art which contrasts in many cases to traditional folk memorials found in Alabama during the period. A variety of examples of funerary art styles can be found exhibited in the cemetery. These include elaborate obelisks, memorial statuary utilizing various forms, pedistal urns, traditional crosses as well as more moderate headstones and flat markers.

As the city's first cemetery, it's located on the east side of town on the side of a sloping hill overlooking the city, bounded on the west by Highland Avenue, on the east by Calhoun Place (formerly Myrtle Avenue), and lying between Tenth and Eleventh Streets. The town council selected the site in 1876 because of its elevation, good drainage, and mixed gravel, clay, and sandy soil. The older part of the cemetery was a square block, 420 by 420 feet. The grounds are planted with oak, magnolia, juniper, and cedar trees, a variety of shrubs, and grass. The steep slope on the west is paved with stones. The original carriage ways and footpaths still divide the cemetery into four equal parts surrounding a central circular area. The older monuments, from elaborate obelisks, statues, and flat markers to more modest headstones, mark the graves of the town's founders and leading early families.

A newer section, Highland Cemetery, now adjoins Hillside to the east of Calhoun Place.

Samuel Noble led the town council in appointing a cemetery committee in early 1876 composed of the mayor Charles O'Rourke, council members John Loyd, J. B. McCain, and himself. The committee made provisions for planting shade trees and grass, grading the paths, and fencing the area. Later in the development of the model city, Samuel Noble invited the famous landscape architect N. F. Barrett (who had worked on Pullman, Illinois) to devise a plan of beautification for Anniston in the 1880s. Barrett's plans, which reportedly cost $50,000, included the town's parks and cemetery, the Tyler and Noble estates, and other large estates. The city deeded the land to the newly organized Hillside Cemetery Association in 1896, but the Associaton returned control to the city on June 9, 1921.

Noted Burials

In addition to the Daniel Tyler (1799-1882) and Samuel Noble (1834-1888) gravesites, Tyler's son Alfred Lee (1834-1907) and his wife Annie Tyler (1938-1914) are buried at Hillside. Annie is the one for whom the town of Anniston was named. Their son Alfred Lee (1866-1940) as well as Daniel Tyler T s son Edmund Leighton Tyler (1838-1906) are also buried there. Samuel Noble's wife and daughter Addie Noble McCaa are interred there. Other gravesites are those of the town's first stonemason, whose work can be seen in the various churches, and who organized the First Methodist Church, Simon Jewell (1827-1911); John McKelroy (1843-1894), first president of the Anniston City Land Company; Dr. Richard P. Huger (1851-1922), the town's first physician; Henry Constantine (1855-1937), a nearby real estate developer who built a block of downtown buildings in the 1880s and 1890s; and J. J. Willett (1860-1955), one of the town's earliest and leading lawyers.

Cemetery Records

The following records come from files from the National Register of Historic Places...

Constantine, Henry, b. 1855, 1937
Huger, Richard P. Dr., b. 1851, d. 1922
Jewell, Simon, b. 1827, d. 1911
McKelroy, John, b. 1843, d. 1894
Noble, Addie McCaa
Noble, Samuel, b. 1834, d. 1888
Tyler, Alfred Lee, b. 1834, 1907
Tyler, Alfred Lee, b. 1866, d. 1940
Tyler, Annie, b. 1838, 1914
Tyler, Daniel, b. 1799, d. 1882
Tyler, Edmund Leighton, b. 1838, d. 1906
Willett, J. J., b. 1860, d. 1955