Mount Holly Cemetery
Encyclopedia
Mount Holly Cemetery is the original cemetery in the Quapaw Quarter
Quapaw Quarter, Little Rock, Arkansas
The Quapaw Quarter of Little Rock, Arkansas is a section of the city including its oldest and most historic business and residential neighborhoods...

 area of downtown Little Rock, Arkansas
Little Rock, Arkansas
Little Rock is the capital and the largest city of the U.S. state of Arkansas. The Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 699,757 people in the 2010 census...

, and is the resting place for numerous Arkansans of note. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

 and has been nicknamed "The Westminster Abbey of Arkansas".

The cemetery is the burial place for 10 former Governors of Arkansas, 6 United States Senators, 14 Arkansas Supreme Court Justices, 21 Little Rock Mayors, numerous Arkansas literary figures, Confederate Generals, and other worthies. Some of the notables buried at Mount Holly are:
  • Dr. James A. Dibrell -- Founder, Dean, and Professor of the University of Arkansas Medical School from 1886 to 1904. President of the Arkansas State Medical Society. Vice President of the American Medical Association in 1902.
  • Dale Alford
    Dale Alford
    Thomas Dale Alford, Sr. was an ophthalmologist and politician from the U.S. state of Arkansas who served as a conservative Democrat in the United States House of Representatives from Little Rock from 1959 to 1963....

     -- U.S. Representative from 1959-1963 and noted ophthalmologist
  • David Owen Dodd
    David Owen Dodd
    David Owen Dodd was an American 17 year-old who was tried, convicted and hanged as a Confederate spy in the American Civil War....

     - boy martyr of the Confederacy
    Confederate States of America
    The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...

  • Sanford Faulkner
    Sanford Faulkner
    Colonel Sanford C. 'Sandy' Faulkner was an American teller of tall tales, fiddle player, and composer of the popular fiddle tune "The Arkansas Traveler", which was the State song of Arkansas from 1949–1963....

     - the original 'Arkansas Traveller'
  • John Gould Fletcher
    John Gould Fletcher
    John Gould Fletcher was an Imagist poet and author. He was born in Little Rock, Arkansas to a socially prominent family. After attending Phillips Academy, Andover Fletcher went on to Harvard University from 1903 to 1907, when he dropped out shortly after his father's death.Fletcher lived in...

     - Pulitzer Prize winning poet
  • William Savin Fulton
    William Savin Fulton
    William Savin Fulton was an American lawyer and politician from Little Rock, Arkansas. He served as Governor of the Arkansas Territory and United States Senator for Arkansas....

     - Governor of Arkansas Territory 1835-1836, U.S. senator from Arkansas 1836-1844
  • Quatie Ross - the wife of Cherokee Chief John Ross
    John Ross (Cherokee chief)
    John Ross , also known as Guwisguwi , was Principal Chief of the Cherokee Native American Nation from 1828–1866...

  • William E. Woodruff - founder of the Arkansas Gazette
    Arkansas Gazette
    The Arkansas Gazette, known as the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi River, and located from 1908 until its October 18, 1991 closing at the now historic Gazette Building, was for many years the newspaper of record for Little Rock and the State of Arkansas...


There are also several slave
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

s who are buried there, marked by extremely modest gravestones.

Every year in October several drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...

 students from Parkview Arts and Science Magnet High School
Parkview Arts and Science Magnet High School
Parkview Arts and Science Magnet High School is a magnet school in Little Rock, Arkansas, United States that concentrates heavily on science and the arts. It is Arkansas' first and only interdistrict high school...

 each select a person buried in the cemetery to research. They then prepare short monologues or dialogues, complete with period costumes, to be performed in front of the researched person's grave. Audiences are led through the cemetery from grave to grave by guides with candles. The event is called "Tales from the Crypt". Although it takes place around the same time as the American holiday Halloween
Halloween
Hallowe'en , also known as Halloween or All Hallows' Eve, is a yearly holiday observed around the world on October 31, the night before All Saints' Day...

, the event is meant to be historic rather than spooky.
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