The Last Confederate Flag Flying in Richmond

The Confederate flag, once so organically part of the Richmond cityscape, is seen in this city no more. The flagpoles at Oakwood and Hollywood cemeteries where the battle flag once flew are bare. No more does the Virginia Flaggers organization park their scarlet Volkswagen with the folding flagpoles in front of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts on Arthur Ashe Boulevard and fly the Stars and Bars. The Confederate flag is no longer on display in front of that bastion of rebel heritage, the mausoleum-like Daughters of the Confederacy building. Statues of Confederate leaders and generals that once loomed over Monument Avenue now lay in the mud of the Richmond Wastewater Treatment Plant under blue tarps. Nevertheless, there is one forgotten spot, one last flagpole in the former Confederate capital where the Confederate banner still flies today.

 

Scenes from Richmond’s Arthur Ashe Boulevard, 2018. Armed members of the Virginia Flaggers group display their Trump and Confederate banners.

 

Richmond’s Riverview Cemetery was established in 1887 on land just to the west of its more famous neighbor, Hollywood. Various social and fraternal groups purchased large plots for their members, such as the Greek section, a plot for Masons, and another for the Eagles fraternal order. Veterans of World War I have their own section, as do those who fought in the Spanish-American War. The Fraternal Order of Elks thought Riverview would be so popular for their members they had everyone in a smaller plot in Hollywood dug up and, along with their statue of an elk, moved to Riverview to accommodate a demand for burial plots that never materialized.

In 1898, the Virginia legislature established what was then called the Home for Needy Confederate Women on North Sheppard Street, on the western side of the Confederate Soldiers’ Home property. Ladies who had a connection to the Confederacy, either as wives or daughters of Confederate veterans, gave their estates to the Home in exchange for lifetime housing and care. In 1932 a substantial new building that resembles the White House was constructed for them and at one point housed as many as 70 elderly women with Confederate connections. The facility closed in 1989, sending their few remaining residents to local nursing homes.

The last Confederate flag flying in Richmond over the Confederate Women’s section of Riverview Cemetery.

 

Because the aging inmates of what would become known as the Confederate Woman’s Home were often without any family or survivors, finding them a burial place was necessary. In March of 1901, the City’s Committee on Cemeteries donated a section at Riverview to the Home for use of their members. The plot was decorated with a flagpole and a small pyramid of stacked granite stones, a miniature version of the huge pyramid constructed in Hollywood Cemetery in 1869 that stands over thousands of Confederate dead. Like the Hollywood pyramid, the one in Riverview has a plaque built into the rough-hewn granite stones, but in this case there is no evidence of anything ever having been engraved in it. Other than the flag, only an overgrown inscription across the threshold to enter the plot identifies those within: “CONFEDERATE WOMEN.”

 

A stone pyramid, a flagpole, and a dead tree mark the Confederate Women’s Section of Richmond’s City-owned Riverview Cemetery.

 

Located on one of the highest points in the cemetery, there are actually forty-three burials in this section, but only thirteen graves are marked. One has a government-issued marker for a veteran. Nancy T. Leech is buried here, with her grave proudly marked “Nurse Army Nurse Corps.” Leech was born in Rockbridge County in 1879 and entered military service as a trained nurse in 1919. Apparently never married, Leech probably served at McGuire Veteran’s Hospital in South Richmond. City directories show Leech living in a series of apartments, most in the Fan District, until she moved permanently to the Confederate Women’s Home on the basis of her father’s service in the Second Rockbridge Artillery in the Civil War. Leech died of a heart attack at McGuire hospital and her sister applied to the Department of Veteran’s Affairs for the grave marker for her after her funeral.

 

The grave marker of retired nurse Nancy Leech (1879-1964) in the Confederate Women’s Section.

 

Another interesting tombstone is located beside the little stone pyramid. It is that of Mary Perry Christian, and the marker is careful to note she was the wife of a Urbanna physician, Dr. Charles C. Christian, a Confederate veteran who died in 1928. Dr. Christian is buried in his family cemetery at “Hewick,” a home outside Urbanna, while his wife chose to be buried sixty miles away at Riverview when she died 28 years later. Mary Christian had begun a relationship with the Confederate Women’s Home as early as 1930 when she took a position as “hostess” at the facility, and perhaps felt it was her real home and family and that here in Riverside with them is where she belonged.

 

The grave marker of Mary Perry Christian (1870-1956)

 

The women in the plot apparently led unremarkable and conventional lives, many being listed by occupation with such titles as “housewife.” Most were quite elderly when they left the Confederate Women’s Home for the last time. Rebecca Morgan, occupation “homemaker,” died in 1963 at the age of 98. Nannie Ferrell died in 1961 at the age of 93. Her death certificate notes she died from a heart attack after having had a fall at the Home. Mattie Price Robertson also succumbed to a heart attack at age 93, and whoever composed and paid for her obituary noted simply, “There are no immediate survivors.”

 

Cora Payton Stancill was not a resident of the Confederate Woman’s Home but lived in a nursing home nearby at 17 North Arthur Ashe Boulevard until a heart attack killed her in 1954. Divorced, but with a large family in the area, she still chose to be buried in the plot at Riverview on the strength of the military record of her father. She and the other women with Confederate connections joined their fellow residents in the plot reserved for them at Riverview Cemetery. For them, burial in that section guaranteed perpetual care, but beyond that, there was added sentimental value to be in a grave forever shaded by the Confederate flag,

The cruciform concrete base of the flagpole in the Confederate Women's section mimics the Confederate battle flag.

 

Out at Riverview, the weathered and tattered flag overhead flaps in the wind. This is not the classic Confederate battle flag with those bold diagonals, but instead is what is termed a variation of the First National Flag, with a circle of eleven stars. Mounted directly behind the stone pyramid, the support at the base of the flagpole is shaped like that Confederate battle flag, right down to (now vanished) little stars set in the X of the concrete. Even in its neglected condition, it is apparent this was once a place filled with symbolism and sentiment at numerous funerals for the honored kin of Confederate soldiers.

 

In the distance, the Confederate flag still flies over the dead, black and white alike, in Richmond’s Riverview Cemetery.

 

Riverview Cemetery has seen several expansions over the decades since the first woman with a Confederate connection was buried in the plot promised her by the City of Richmond. The demand for more burial spaces, in general, was accelerated after 1968 when the facility was opened to African-Americans. Judging by the portraits found on many modern grave markers, Riverview has become a place popular with blacks for the internment of their loved ones. In the background, above the tree line, the Confederate banner still flaps in the wind, prominent against the sky. The last Confederate flag flying in Richmond remains a weathered but persistent icon of the tattered memories and faded symbols of the Lost Cause.

-- Selden.