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Blandford Cemetery
Petersburg, Virginia

GPS: 37.226695, -77.381978

319 S Crater Rd
Petersburg, VA 23803

Published: July 7, 2016
Total records: 16,307

Blandford Cemetery is owned and maintained by the City of Petersburg.

History

Blandford Cemetery has its oldest grave in 1702, that of Richard Yarbrough, though no one really knows how far back the grounds have been used. The new Anglican Church was built here in 1735, and burials increased surrounding the church grounds. By the 1760s, locals had been referring to the church as, "Blandford Church".

By the early 1800s, church congregation had thinned and finally was abandoned. In 1819, the City of Petersburg bought the land and church, and used the grounds as its municipal cemetery. During the Civil War, in the year 1866, a woman was spotted planting Confederate Flags on soldiers graves, giving inspiration to the origins of Memorial Day.

"Old Ground" (OG) refers to the original portion of the cemetery up to the 1854 purchase of 20 acres. "New Ground" (NG) refers to the areas purchased afterwards. Today, Blandford Cemetery measures some 189 acres.

Cemetery Records

Records published here were compiled by the Historic Blandford Cemetery Foundation from 1987-1992 as part of its nomination procedure for addition to the National Register of Historic Places. The Cemetery was added to the register in 1992.

Volunteers photographed tombstones and created "record cards" for each grave they inventoried. Not all graves were inventoried, however.

Thousands of new burials have taken place at Blandford Cemetery since 1992. These records perhaps account for approximately 40% of Blandford's total burials.

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