While Charleston is notable for its ghost tours + stories, have you ever wondered why we have so many cemeteries and why they look a little less than spooky?

The 1800s’ Rural Cemetery Movement is to thank for Charleston’s beautiful burial grounds – a global movement which began when 19th century Romanticism evoked people’s desire for a pleasant or memorable place of rest for the dead.

Amid this movement, an outbreak of yellow fever in the 1850s left Charleston in need of more public burial sites. Because of this, the Magnolia Cemetery Company, alongside renowned architect Edward C. Jones, began the peninsula’s largest cemetery ruralization project.

William B. Smith Mausoleum in Magnolia Cemetery | Image via @lookingthroughkenslens

Among areas selected to restore was Magnolia Umbra Plantation, of which 92 acres were donated to the Magnolia Cemetery Company in 1849. Now composed of 23 cemeteries built between 1850 and 1956, Magnolia Umbra transformed into the Charleston Cemeteries Historic District.

The first cemetery established in the district was Magnolia Cemetery, which opened in 1850 – making it the oldest public cemetery in Charleston. The burial site, now seen as a museum of sorts, is home to many notable things such as a special section for the third + final crew of the H.L. Hunley, a preserved receiving tomb + an iconic pyramid crypt known as the William B. Smith Mausoleum.

The Magnolia Cemetery is featured in the South Carolina Picture Project, and the Charleston Cemeteries Historic District was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on June 24, 2017.

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