Landscape Information
In 1872, Reverend James Peck of Sharp Street Memorial United Methodist Church purchased a 32-acre parcel overlooking the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River. On this site the church established the first official burial ground for the city’s African Americans. The cemetery was incorporated by an Act of the Maryland State Legislature on January 4, 1882, and renamed Mount Auburn in 1894.
Situated in the neighborhoods of Westport, Mount Winans, Morrell Park and Violetville, the cemetery is bounded by Waterview Avenue and Hollins Ferry Road, railroad lines, and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. The roughly rectangular site has a simple design, with a few asphalt roads bisecting the cemetery and a loop road on the western half, with views east towards the river and Baltimore Harbor beyond. Structures in the cemetery are vernacular, consisting of a one-room brick receiving vault with a parged and white-washed exterior and metal roof and an office at the cemetery’s center. The cemetery is mostly surrounded by chain link fencing, with a concrete and mosaic stone entrance sign. The burial ground is significant in its use of a simplified rural cemetery style and its representation of African-American traditions and burial practices from the late nineteenth century to the present. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2001, the cemetery is also noted for the many community leaders and civil rights activists who are buried there
