Ella Pozell who, along with her husband Joseph, worked for 26 years at Oak Hill Cemetery in the heart of Georgetown from 1986-2012. Oak Hill is listed on the National Register of Historic Places; included on the grounds are two structures – Oak Hill Cemetery Chapel and the Van Ness Mausoleum – both of which are also listed, separately, on the National Register of Historic Places. Founded in 1849 and completed in 1853, it’s a good example of a “garden cemetery” which has landscaped winding paths and terraces that descend into nearby Rock Creek Park. The cemetery is notable not only for its natural beauty but for its many famous inhabitants which Mrs. Pozell covers quite well in this oral history. Because of its history and its beauty, Trip Advisor recommends Oak Hill as one site to see while visiting Washington, DC. Interviewers: Cathy Farrell Linda Greenan
Ella Pozell August 27, 2016
Oak Hill Cemetery, Georgetown, Washington, DC.
Interviewers: Linda Greenan and Cathy Farrell
Linda: It’s August 27, 2016. We’re visiting with Ella Pozell, P O Z E L L, at Oak Hill Cemetery. She and her husband, Joe, were long time superintendents of Oak Hill. We’re here to talk to her about her remembrances, and what she knows about the history. It’s Linda Greenan and Cathy Farrell. Hello.
Ella: Hello. I am so pleased to do this because Oak Hill has a special place in my heart. My late husband and I were here… I was here 28 years and he was here 20 years. We came in 1984, and he became the superintendent soon thereafter. After his death in 2005, I became the superintendent and stayed until I retired, September 2012.
Oak Hill is just an amazing, lovely historic place. As many people know it was founded by William Wilson Corcoran. He bought the original 15 acres in 1849 from Lewis Washington and George Corbin Washington, I think. We need to check that, make sure the first name is correct.
Anyway, he bought the land from them, the original land in 1849. It was chartered by Congress on March 3rd, 1849 because, at that time, that was the only government here in the district. Congress took care of all the regulatory and statutory things of the District.
March 3rd, ’49 was the charter. The first burial was a young lady named Eleanor Ann Washington, who was the daughter of George Corbin Washington, the man who had sold land to Mr. Corcoran.
Linda: Was he known as the mayor of Georgetown, Mr. Washington?
Ella: He might have been, I don’t know.
[crosstalk]
Linda: I don’t remember that.
Ella: She was interred here, April 1849, so a very early burial. The north part, what we call the North Hill area of the cemetery, was laid out first. The lots were sold there first. Mr. Corcoran has his mausoleum there, which is very prominently displayed. That is the oldest section of the cemetery.
That is also the section where the Carroll mausoleum is. In 1862, when Willie Lincoln died, he was interred in the Carroll mausoleum. William Thomas Carroll was a Supreme Court clerk. He was a good friend of President Lincoln.
When Willie died in 1862, the Carrolls gave permission for him to be interred there. When President Lincoln was assassinated, Willie was taken out of the mausoleum and taken back to Illinois with his father.
During the Civil War, Mr. Corcoran bought another 10 acres, which is now what we call our East Side of the cemetery to make the current 25 acres of the cemetery. It is the “new section” done in 1865 or during the Civil War. It was 1865, the turn of the Civil War.
Probably the most active time of the cemetery was during the Civil War. We have quite a few Civil War generals here and later, after the Civil War. Edwin Stanton who was Lincoln’s Secretary of War is buried here, and quite a few, as I said, generals who were both North and South.
Cathy: Oh, I didn’t know that, North and South?
Ella: North and South, yes. Cadmus Marcellus Wilcox was a Southern general and he’s buried here. Then, of course, a lot of Union generals are here.
Cathy: Can I ask? How was it that Southern Confederate generals would have been here?
Ella: Mr. Corcoran was a Southern sympathizer. He went to England during the Civil War to try to raise money for the South. Actually, Washington was a Southern town in many ways. I remember when Joe and I first came here, I was doing some research at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the archives there.
In looking at various newspaper articles and comments in the newspaper. I remember one. I laughed out loud because there was an article about Mr. Corcoran and his creating the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
Also, he founded the Louise Home for Women who, as he said, through no fault of their own became indigent because they had lost either their husbands or had never married. The Louise Home was over on Massachusetts Avenue. He created the Louise Home for these women. It was named in honor of his wife, Louise, and his deceased daughter, Louise.
One of the editorials said, “We are so grateful for Mr. Corcoran’s contributions to the city and we forgive him for being on the Southern side during the Civil War.” [laughs] That was a good thing they forgave him for that. I never forgot that.
Cathy: What paper was that?
Ella: It was just one of the local papers. Somebody had clipped this to say, “Thank you, Mr. Corcoran and we do forgive you for being very involved.” There was always something interesting.
I have this in the file here that someone came collecting money for an organization to support women who had fallen on hard times. Mr. Corcoran gave a donation, and he said, “I only want just the interest on the money to be spent because we know that no woman or group of women could spend the entire amount.”
[laughter]
Ella: That’s what Mr. Corcoran felt, so that’s OK.
Cathy: Did he live here? Did he live in this house?
Ella: No, he did not. No, he lived down, actually at Lafayette Square in one of those homes. The Renwick Gallery I believe was his home at one point or near there. I should know that, but I’m sorry I don’t. He was down near the White House. No, the Gatehouse, has always been the residence of the superintendent.
It has been here since the cemetery was established in 1849. Obviously, it has been added on to numerous times for indoor plumbing, indoors kitchen and so on. Mr. Corcoran never lived here.
Yes, there were many burials during the Civil War. The Peter family, who own Tudor place, actually had two very tragic things happen. William Orton William and his cousin Walton Gibson Peter were cousins and were Confederate officers in the Southern Army.
They were down near Franklin, Tennessee. They thought it would be a great joke to dress up as Union officers and go across the enemy lines. They were captured, and they were hanged the next day. Their monument and their burial site are just behind the chapel.
You’ll see it was June 2nd, 1863. The Union was not amused. One of the cousins had his credentials in his hat. They were captured and hanged the next day. That was a tragedy for the family.
Linda: They were the Peter family?
Ella: The Peter family, yes. One of them was engaged to Robert E. Lee’s daughter so that was a very tragic thing for the Peter family. They did manage to get their bodies back up here in the church. It might have been much later than their death day, but they were brought back.
Linda: Was this viewed even at the time or anytime, was Oak Hill viewed as a place for people with means or were there ordinary people?
Ella: Probably at that time Mr. Corcoran wanted an in-town burial place. At that time, probably it would have been for people of ordinary means. A lot of times they could make payments, $10 a month or something like that. Space now has become more precious and the sites not quite as abundant.
Probably it was an ordinary place back then, but there were a lot of prominent people who did end up here. A lot of the cemeteries back in the 19th century were on people’s estates and church yards. Of course, Congressional Cemetery is older than Oak Hill as is Rock Creek. Those were “suburban” cemeteries.
This was a needed in-town cemetery. Mr. Corcoran was a visionary in that respect. As the years progressed, obviously, the burials did. The list of notable people who were entered here became quite long. We do have a brochure that lists some of the prominent ones. Let me get it so that I won’t miss anybody that might be of note.
Ella: The members of the Peter family, the two confederate officers were William Orton Williams and his cousin Walter Gibson Peter. Walter Gibson Peter was engaged to Robert E. Lee’s daughter, and they were hanged in 1863.
Cathy: Sad story.
Linda: Yes. What were they thinking?
Ella: I know. I know. Sometimes as with these jokes, the other side is not amused. The early years of the cemetery, William Corcoran was the founder. Captain George De La Rouche was an engineer who graded and plotted the cemetery. The early lots were laid out by him. One of the notable things in the early days was the building of the Renwick Chapel.
James Renwick designed the Chapel. He also designed the Smithsonian Castle and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City. He was a good friend of Mr. Corcoran. The gatehouse, which is also a prominent structure here, has been the residence of the superintendent since the cemetery was established. We’re not really sure who designed it. It’s Italianate style. As good as our records are sometimes things are just missing.
We have quite a few women of interest here at the cemetery. Marsha Burnes Van Ness was one of them. Her father owned the land where the White House is now. Her father was called one of the most obstinate men who ever lived.
[laughter]
Ella: That’s the way it is sometimes. Anyway, she married John Peter Van Ness who was a congressman from New York. They founded the Washington Orphan Asylum. They have a lovely mausoleum here which when it was originally built, was down where China Town is now. It was dismantled and brought here so that’s where the family is now.
She was helping out in the cholera epidemic, and she contracted cholera and died. Her husband lived on after her.
Linda: He was a Van Ness?
Ella: He was a Van Ness.
Linda: And her father was…
Ella: Davey Burnes. We have it as B U R N E S, and you see various spellings of course as things were back then.
Linda: With an E?
Ella: Yes.
Cathy: He owned the property where the White House is?
Ella: Her father did, yes.
Cathy: Her father?
Ella: Yes.
Linda: Wow.
Ella: Peggy O’Neil Eaton has quite a reputation. There’s even a movie called “The Gorgeous Hussy.” She was a tavern keeper’s daughter, and Senator John Eaton who was a senator from Tennessee frequented or stayed at her father’s tavern or the inn. She was married at the time.
Word came that her husband had committed suicide at sea, but it may have been that he heard that she had been seen walking or talking with Senator Eaton. They married. It actually split President Andrew Jackson’s cabinet. The wives would not receive her nor did they want to be associated with her. What Andrew Jackson did was make her husband an ambassador to Spain and sent them abroad.
[laughter]
Ella: They solved that little problem. She came back and, actually, we have pictures here in the cemetery and our archives of the Peggy O’Neil Eaton lot. There’s also a picture of her. She never had a tombstone. Her husband had this huge obelisk, Senator John Eaton, and all his accomplishments, but her name was never on the stone until maybe about 10 years ago.
A group came in filming an article about the cemetery, I think it was NBC, and they put her name on the stone.
Cathy: No kidding!
Ella: She said she wanted her tombstone to say she was never dull.
[laughter]
Ella: I think that’s quite a legacy. I bet she was never dull.
Linda: Did they have children?
Ella: Yes they did. In fact, Peggy’s granddaughter ran off with Peggy’s much younger dance instructor and took a great deal of her money.
Linda: It’s interesting to me that he would have been buried here and not in Tennessee.
Ella: A lot of people who are buried here are from other states
[crosstalk]
Cathy: You have some Illinois residents, as well.
Ella: Senator Gale McGee from Wyoming is buried here. Many congressmen and senators get “Potomac” fever and they never leave. This becomes home. We have so many people who, when Joe and I were dealing with people coming in to get burial sites, said, “This is home now. We grew up in Illinois or we grew up in San Francisco, but we came here, children were born here, we worked here.” This becomes home for a lot. They just don’t go back.
Another woman was Myrtilla Miner, who established the first school for African American girls in Washington. Miner Teachers College was named for her.
Cathy: That was part of Howard University?
Ella: Yes, that is correct. Yes.
Cathy: It came up in another interview I did a couple weeks ago with some people from the Zion Methodist Church.
Ella: Oh, yes, OK. Another woman of interest is EDEN Southworth. Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworths was a Georgetown resident who wrote over 70 romance novels. Also there were interesting women who were spies. Everybody always wants to know, “Who were the spies?” These were all Confederate spies. Lillie Mackall was a member of the Rose O’Neal Greenhow spy ring.
Cathy: Will you spell her name?
Ella: Yes. L I L L I E, M A C K A L L. She was very good at listening at keyholes and riding around in the dark. Unfortunately, she contracted pneumonia and I think she died at 18 or 19. She’s buried just behind the chapel.
Another woman spy was Antonia Ford Willard who lived out in Fairfax. She was spying for the South. She was captured and her captor was General Joseph Willard. Supposedly, he took her to the Fairfax jail, and on the way they fell in love.
[laughter]
Ella: We don’t know how long a carriage ride that was, but long enough, I suppose. He had to promise that he would be kind to the South, and she had to promise she would never spy again, and they got married. He is one of the founders of the Willard hotel. Quite a few years ago, there was an article in “The Washington Post” Sunday magazine titled “The Spy Who Loved Him.” It’s about their romance and their legacy.
She promised not to do that. Another spy was Bettie Duval Webb. She was a spy, part of the Rose O’Neal spy ring, too. She hid messages in her hair and would ride through the countryside giving messages.
Linda: Amazing.
Ella: I know. Truly amazing!
Linda: They’re buried here?
Ella: They’re buried here.
Linda: Is that because of Mr. Corcoran?
Ella: I don’t know.
Cathy: They probably lived in Virginia?
Ella: Yes. I’d have to check the dates. Lillie Mackall and Antonia Ford Willard died before Mr. Corcoran. These families might have owned lots in here prior to the war. We’ve talked about Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s secretary of war, William Thomas Carroll, who had the Carroll Mausoleum where Lincoln was placed.
Linda: Who was he? Do we know who Mr. Carroll was?
Ella: All we know is a Supreme Court clerk. Probably there are thousands of bits of information on the Internet.
[http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=14448183]
Cathy: Is it C A R R O L L?
Ella: Yes, like the Carrolls from Maryland. Yes, that is correct. Richard Merrick is buried here. He was the attorney for John Surratt. As we know, John Surratt was eventually caught. He escaped and went to England. He was finally caught in Rome. He became a guard at the Vatican. He was brought back for a trial, but it was a hung jury, so he was never convicted. He escaped any kind of punishment. John Nicolay was Lincoln’s secretary and biographer. You’ve probably heard that name. Andrew Riley was the Supreme Court judge who issued a writ of habeas corpus for Mrs. Surratt, but President Johnson suspended it. She was subsequently hanged. Let’s see.
Cathy: She’s not buried here?
Ella: Who?
Cathy: Mrs. Surratt.
Linda: It was just the judge?
Ella: Yeah, just Andrew Riley. She’s buried, I think, out in…
Linda: Maryland.
Ella: In Maryland somewhere. There is a whole list of generals who are buried here. Joseph K. Barnes was Surgeon General at the time of the President’s assassination. He was with Lincoln on the night that he was assassinated, not at Ford’s Theater, but across the street at the Petersen house.
General Albert Pike was a Confederate general and he was removed from Oak Hill to the Masonic Temple in Washington, DC in December of 1944. I guess another claim to fame is that he was one of the founding members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Cadmus Marcellus Wilcox is another Confederate general.
Jesse Reno, was a Union general for whom Reno Nevada is names. A friend of his was on the railroad commission. They were naming towns and so on for people that maybe we’ve never heard of, but anyway, this friend was a friend of Jesse Reno’s. Jesse Reno was killed at the Battle of South Mountain.
Linda: It’s interesting to me, too, Reno Road, Van Ness …when you hear all these names…
[crosstalk]
Ella: Oh, yes. The Huidekopers are out here. There’s a Huidekoper family. It really is quite remarkable how so many names linger all these many years later. We have quite a few artists, writers, inventors, and designers. Herman Hollerith is buried here. In fact, his daughters, the last one, Nannie, I believe, died during the time that I was here.
His family had a house down on 29th Street. It was three stories. Each of the daughters had their own story in the house. He invented the punch card, and later on, his company was sold to a company that became IBM.
Linda: That’s right.
Ella: Paul Pelz was the designer of the Library of Congress. Joseph Henry was the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and discovered electromagnetism.
Adolf Cluss was the architect of the Agriculture Department, the Washington Penitentiary where the Lincoln conspirators were hanged. Henry Ulke was a portrait painter. His portrait of President Grant still hangs in the White House. Henry Ulke was a border at the Petersen house where Lincoln died. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ulke]
A very prominent statue on the grounds of Oak Hill is that of John Howard Payne. There is a bust of him atop an obelisk. John Howard Payne wrote “Home Sweet Home.” John Howard Payne had also been an actor and Corcoran admired his work. Later on in John Howard Payne’s life, he became part of a diplomatic corps and went to Tunisia where he died.
William Corcoran had a bust created of John Howard Payne as a young man atop an obelisk in the ellipse. There was a great unveiling. The President was here. I think it was Chester Arthur. The United States Senate, the House, John Philip Sousa’s band was here. I actually found the program for that day at a flea market.
Cathy: Really?
Ella: Yes.
Linda: Amazing.
Ella: We have the program for when this was dedicated. At the unveiling, they unveiled it, and John Howard Payne had a beard. Corcoran had never known him with a beard so he had the beard shaved.
[laughter]
Ella: I guess that’s the only statue I know of in the cemetery that’s had a shave, but he is clean-shaven and whatever Mr. Corcoran wanted, Mr. Corcoran got. It’s quite a lovely monument, and we actually had a rededication while I was here 100 years after the dedication. There was a gentleman who was very interested in John Howard Payne, and we had a little program out there on the ellipse one Sunday afternoon, June 9, 1991. It was quite nice, The original dedication might have been in 1891. Anyway, John Howard Payne’s remains were brought back here from Tunisia. Yes, he is buried here.
William Tyler Page is the author of the Americans’ Creed, which I remember from the DAR. We say that at the beginning every meeting, and it is on his tombstone. The whole thing is on his tombstone.
I’m jumping around. Major John Adlum was a Revolutionary War soldier, a captain in the War of 1812 and he developed the Catawba Grape.
Reverend Stephen Bloomer Balch was a Revolutionary War soldier and he was also the pastor of the Georgetown Presbyterian Church for over 50 years, and that evolved into the Presbyterian Church on P Street. It used to be over where Volta Park is now and the cemetery was there and a lot of people were moved here from Volta Park.
Cathy: I was going to say they were really old.
Ella: Yes, and when they built the swimming pool over there, they were extremely surprised to find bones. You don’t get everybody if you move a cemetery. But Reverend Balch was a…
Linda: Wait, are you saying that where Volta Park is was also a cemetery?
Ella: Correct.
Cathy: Churchyard.
Ella: The churchyard. It was called the Bridge Street Presbyterian Church and the Volta Park was a cemetery.
Linda: I’ll be darned. Now the Presbyterian church…
Ella: Is down on P Street, yes. A lot of the remains were brought here. We have many, many people that were originally interred…
Cathy: Other places. I didn’t realize that church had moved there, but I knew that that was Bridge and High Street. Wisconsin was called High Street.
Linda: Talk a little bit about when you first came to the cemetery as the superintendent. I did not realize that you came first, before Joe.
Ella: No, he did.
Linda: Oh, he did. Oh, I’m sorry.
Ella: He came in ’84 and then when he died in 2005 I became superintendent. Yeah, 2005.
Linda: Oh, OK. I thought when you said in the beginning that you were here first, but then…
Ella: No, no. He was here first.
Linda: But he came first and then you two, then you married, or…?
Ella: Oh no, no, we were already married when we came here. Yes, we got married in 1975, so we came here in 1984 together, and our son Joseph came with us. Joseph was five years old when we came here.
It just is such an amazingly interesting job. He and I never dreaded a single day at work because we knew we were always going to learn something. People would come in doing research and telling us about their families and just, studying the whole history of the cemetery, the people who were buried here, historical figures of a long time ago and contemporary ones.
There was always something to learn and people to meet, and it was just an incredible job that Joe loved, I loved, and as I say, I never dreaded a single day. I looked forward to each day here. It was really fun. I guess fun is not the word, but the burial part of it, you do have to have a bit of, I guess they call it, detached professionalism.
You feel for the families and their loss and so many times after the burial, people come in and have coffee with us and they just talk. That’s a big part of the job, is just talking and…
Linda: Comfort?
Ella: Yes, yes. Having a cup of coffee or glass of tea or something. That part I really enjoyed, as did Joe. You just learn so much about families and the struggles they’ve had, the happiness they’ve had, and they will really open up to you about anything that you think, “Oh, I don’t know if I should know that but…”
The funniest thing is when people are doing research and you have the big plot books, you open them up. Each lot in the cemetery has a page in this big book that we keep. We open up the lot 200 and somebody’s doing research and they start down the line, writing down the people who are buried here, when they were buried and invariably someone would say, “How did she get buried here? Nobody ever liked her and she was the second wife.”
[laughter]
Ella: We say, “Well, you know, that was really before our time, that was in 1932 and so we don’t know.” Invariably, there are always amusing things that people say and, sometimes inadvertently you get a little chuckle out of it but…
Linda: I wonder did you know when you were coming here how great it was going to be and how historic it was but also, it seems like, tell me if this is wrong, that it’s kind of unique, in terms of, it’s clearly a unique cemetery, but it’s unique in that it’s really part of the community. You and Joe were so much part of Georgetown…
Ella: Thank you.
Linda: That seems like that’s sort of unique too.
Ella: It is, because so many of the cemeteries where the superintendent lived had a gate-house or whatever. Oak Hill is probably one of the few remaining that still does [where the superintendent lives].
Many gatehouses have become offices or storage facilities or visitor centers and so I think that is one thing that really, being here all the time, there are obviously sometimes you feel like you’re always on the job. In another sense, so many times Joe and I would, after hours… any time there had been a burial, we would always visit that site that day, that night, after we closed up.
Joe was very pragmatic. First of all, he wanted to make sure there were no tools left behind when the family came to visit. But just as a matter of like, “OK, here’s a new person and a new family that has suffered this.”
I think if we had driven away and gone to our home in the Northwest or Bethesda or wherever, it wouldn’t be quite the same as just being here. I saw something new almost every time I walked out…saw a new stone, read an inscription that I had missed because there’d been a shrub blooming there in the summer and in the fall the leaves might have covered it.
There was always something new to see. Maybe I would walk behind a tombstone… “Oh. We did not know that that inscription was there.” It is a unique place in that sense, that we had no idea when we came here. In fact, I thought, “Well, maybe we’ll stay here a few years.” Joe had mainly been hired because the former superintendent, George Kackley, needed some grounds-keeping help. I just accidentally fell into it.
George Kackley was a very, very gracious man. When I started working here our son had not started to school. He let me bring Joseph with me every day to work.
Linda: Oh, so you all weren’t living here yet.
Ella: No. We did not live here until Mr. Kackley left. We came in April of 1984 and Mr. Kackley left the next year, April, 1985. No, we lived over on Whitehaven Parkway but Mr. Kackley very nicely let me bring Joseph with me from April until he started school in September.
George Kackley was an amazing historian. I learned a lot just listening to him because he loved research. I think he had taught or been associated with a school down in Alexandria and the history just came alive with him. He was very animated. He was just a really very smart man and I learned a lot of the history of Oak Hill from him. We didn’t move here until after George left.
I had, of course, no idea how this job would evolve in such a way that it really gets into your heart. I think that Dave and Darla Jackson, David now, you know is the superintendent, he’s finding that too. A part of it, there’s the job, you have to do the job.
But just the relationships you have with the people, the families, and so many groups are interested in Oak Hill. I’ve done so many tours, garden clubs, student groups, the DAR ladies, and everybody wants to know about Oak Hill because it is just a real treasure and a real jewel in the city.
Linda: It’s so beautiful.
Ella: It is, it is. It’s exquisite.
Linda: How about some of the contemporary folks who are here now.
Ella: We do have quite a few contemporary people. President Truman’s Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, is buried by the chapel. Also David and Evangeline Bruce. David Bruce was the ambassador to France, England and West Germany. Philip and Katharine Graham are also by the chapel.
Edward Douglass White was a Chief Justice of the United States. And of course Ben Bradlee who was… I guess he was the publisher or editor of the Washington Post. He is now buried here.
Linda: He’s prominently buried here.
Ella: He is, yes, he has a mausoleum on the ellipse, which has been here for about a year now, it will be a year in September or October. Those are the ones who have the most name recognition of contemporary people. Let me think if there are any…Glenn Brenner is buried here.
Linda: Oh yes, oh yes.
Ella: He was a sportscaster on channel 9 for years and years.
Linda: It was so sudden.
Ella: I know and that was a very, very, very big funeral. Many people came to visit his grave. A lot of little old ladies and I’m a little old lady myself now. [laughs] They would come. Everybody listened to his predictions. I guess it was a nun who helped him with the predictions for the football games. I think she was from Georgetown. Sister Mary something…
[crosstalk]
Ella: Yes, I think she was a Visitation nun. Yes. I’m not sure but there was a nun who collaborated with him.
Linda: He was beloved.
Ella: He was very beloved. He really was. Kay Halle, is buried here. She lived down the street and she was in England during the war. She was from Ohio, and I think her family owned a big department store maybe in Cleveland.
She was in London during the war and was part of that whole OSS group. Julia Child was one of them. She and her husband were in the OSS. Kay was quite a colorful character herself so she was interesting to talk to because she had known Winston Churchill and the Churchill family. It was really quite amazing to listen to people of that era.
When Joe had his landscaping business, he worked for Mrs. John Sherman Cooper. John Sherman Cooper was a senator from Kentucky, I believe. She was quite a colorful character too. She had a big party for the Senate every spring and Joe would go and get her garden ready and she would come out in her little caftan and turban, and talk to Joe and tell all that there was to know about the Senate.
[laughter]
Ella: It was always interesting. Joe was hard of hearing, which many people knew and in the early days, really before he got his wonderful, wonderful hearing aids, towards the end of his life. She knew he was hard of hearing and one day he was working in her garden and, you know this is really kind of irrelevant because they’re not buried here but anyway, she said, “Joe, I have a solution for your deafness,” she said, “Come with me.” She had on one of her caftans and he said she said, “Sit down, here on the grass, cross leged and put your thumb in your mouth and blow real hard and that will clean out your ears.”
[laughter]
Ella: Anyway, as I say, an irrelevant story, but this is Georgetown.
Cathy: Did it help?
Ella: No, unfortunately, it did not help. I don’t know if he ever had the heart to tell her or not.
[laughter]
Linda: But that was sweet of her.
Ella: It was very sweet. Yes, yes. Those ladies were lovely ladies and so it was, yes, it was never dull here. Sometimes people say, “Oh a cemetery, man that must have been really depressing and really boring,” and there is nothing boring or depressing about Oak Hill.
Never will be I don’t think. There just is a certain sadness with the families. You feel their loss especially for people who lose children. No matter how a parent is helped. We’ve had 80-year-olds who’ve lost their 40-year-olds and it is extremely sad and it’s just a devastating event for them.
Cathy: I was doing a little research this morning on Oak Hill and I came across a note that President Lincoln would come to the mausoleum where his son was interred. There was a rocking chair in there and he would literally take him out of the casket and hold his body. Is there any truth to that?
[laughter]
Linda: That was David Rothman who said that.
Ella: Yes, there is always a lot of lore concerning a cemetery. There could have been a rocking chair in the place where Willie was buried. Actually it’s interesting because we have a drawing of the entire Carroll Mausoleum, and it doesn’t have Willie Lincoln listed anywhere. We don’t know what niche he was in.
But it could be that he could slide out the casket and I think I have heard this, and again I’m not sure, we have to check our facts on this. I don’t know if part of the casket was glass on top…
Cathy: That’s what I’ve read.
Ella: …that he could see, but as far as taking him out of the casket, I really don’t believe that would be true. But he could visit and I guess if you’re the President of the United States, you just come when you want to.
Interestingly enough, Jefferson Davis had a son buried here too.
Cathy: Really?
Ella: He did. He was removed to Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, VA, May 29, 1873. Joe and I used to say, “Wouldn’t it have been interesting if Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln visited at the same time.” They both had lost children. That, of course, we don’t know. I’m working on a project with Joe Krakora who has just retired from the National Gallery of Art. He and I are working on a documentary about Oak Hill. Part of this documentary is a fictional encounter between Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. Joe Krakora is an amazing, amazing person. He is so smart and he is a wonderful writer. He did a documentary on the founder of the National Gallery. What’s his name?
Cathy: Oh, Andrew Mellon?
Ella: Thank you. Yes. Andrew Mellon. I have a copy of it at home. It’s a CD on Paul Mellon and Joe narrates it and did all the research.
Anyway, we’re working on this documentary, which Joe says he’s going to try to get on PBS. It’ll be about an hour. But a part of this, is, what if they had met? What might they have said and how might this, things are different when it’s one on one.
Cathy: The purpose of their visit.
Ella: Yes, the purpose of the visit. It’s a very interesting dialogue…
Linda: How it may have changed things.
Ella: Hopefully, it will get aired. Actually Joe and I are having breakfast on Tuesday and we’re going to talk about it and everything. But it’s in the works. A lot of the focus is on the children buried at Oak Hill, which there are, I think, about 3,000.
Linda: Is that right?
Ella: It’s a very high number. Yes, a very high number.
Cathy: A lot of children died in those days.
Ella: Yes, and looking at the burials, a lot of our lots now have the burial orders that indicate that children would die of measles, but probably high fever or something. Children would die of mumps.
Cathy: How many people are interred here?
Ella: About 19,600, including cremations. That’s everything. One of the families that I directed Joe Krakora to is the White family over by the Van Ness Mausoleum. They lost five children in one month.
Cathy: Oh my gosh…
Ella: In December of 1878. At the very bottom of the tombstone it says, “Thy will be done.” Now, how anybody can do that, I don’t know.
Linda: Really, really.
Ella: Five children in one month.
Linda: What was…?
Ella: Scarlet fever.
Linda: Scarlet fever.
Ella: You look around and you see a lot of little lambs. The cemetery statuary is interesting too. You see little lambs. That’s usually where a child is buried. You see an upside down torch. That usually means someone died before their time. A lot of urns that are draped. They looks like have a cloth draped over. That’s a sign of mourning. Lilies are symbolic of eternal life. There is lots of symbolism in these cemeteries.
Oak Hill is part of what is called the Garden Cemetery Movement, which started around 1836. I guess the queen of the Garden Cemetery Movement cemeteries is Mount Auburn, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Amazing cemetery.
The board just went there about a month ago to visit. Then, there’s Laurel Hill in Philadelphia. Of course, Oak Hill is one. There are not many left that are…They’re still part of the garden cemetery movement, but maybe not quite on the scale or the grandeur of Mount Auburn and Laurel Hill and Oak Hill.
They were designed to be almost like a park, a place for people to go, take picnic baskets on Sundays, and commune with their deceased relatives or whatever. It was a place of beauty. I think that Romantic poets always linked death and beauty together in their poems. Yes, there is death but there’s a certain beauty.
The Garden Cemetery Movement cemeteries definitely try to do that. You see a lot of serpentine paths and lovely bushes and shrubs. Things that are peaceful, I guess, is the word.
Anyway, Oak Hill definitely has that, and that has been what the board and the superintendents through years have tried to maintain. The planting, the landscape of the cemetery remains romantic for lack of a better word.
Linda: They have. It’s just beautiful.
Ella: Yes. A lot of the trees here are probably some of the oldest in the city because during the Civil War a lot of trees were cut for the forts.
Linda: Really?
Ella: Yes, our trees couldn’t cut because it was a private property. We have some really old trees.
Cathy: I have been here for a wedding in that little chapel. Does that happen on a regular basis?
Ella: It does. Yes, we do have weddings here on occasion. Obviously, it’s a small wedding. The chapel sits about 50 people. Joe and I had several weddings while we were here, and David Jackson has done quite a few weddings.
It’s a lovely setting and sometimes people just want a little place, intimate and historic. It does lend itself to small weddings, and we’ve done quite a few of those. Who was the wedding with?
Cathy: I can’t remember it. It was about 40 years ago.
[laughter]
Ella: OK.
Cathy: They lived in one of the red brick houses across the street.
Ella: I know one we did was for the gentleman who owns the Old Town Trolley that goes by. He and his wife got married here, and every time one of the trolleys went by, “clang, clang, clang!”
[laughter]
Ella: That was fun. That was a happy day for them.
Cathy: Let’s see, I guess, life in the Georgetown….
Ella: I beg your pardon?
Cathy: Address yours and Joe’s life as really being part of the larger community, not just as it related to the cemetery.
Ella: One thing we did, we joined the Georgetown Citizens Association when we started living here, and Joe became a member of the business association. That is how you become a part of a community. You build relationships. We were always talking about Oak Hill, and trying to get people interested in it. As the years went by more and more people became very attuned to problems of Oak Hill. When you have a 19th century cemetery in the 21st century, there are issues and there are things to be dealt with.
We found that the community was so welcoming and I know, even living down North Carolina, I said, “Woo, Georgetown.” It was probably very snooty, but no.
The people were so welcoming, and wanted to really make a difference in the community itself. I know one time Joe and I were walking down…It was in the summertime, and we were walking down to have dinner somewhere. Joe was always attuned to landscaping and he said, “Just look at these weeds! Just look at these weeds in these tree boxes along the way.”
I said, “Joe, you know, people are away in the summertime.” “No, they need to make sure that their gardener takes the weeds out of them. The tree boxes. Look at those weeds.” Now you may see so many well tended little tree boxes right by the curb.
Linda: He became the chair of the beautification.
Ella: Yes, he did.
Linda: That’s when he…He handled that one!
[laughter]
[crosstalk]
Ella: He was looking for beautification. He joined the Friends of Montrose Park and helped clean up that. I don’t know if he was as involved when they did the area behind Dumbarton Oaks. That area was OK, and he might have helped a bit.
Cathy: That was Bill Corcoran.
Ella: OK, yes. I think it is an amazing community, and I’m so glad the Citizen’s Association is doing this project to further enhance the appreciation of what is here, what has been here, what we hope will remain here. That is extremely important, and the business association that Joe was involved in, too, again, and the university. There have always been town-gown issues.
I think there’s really a real enthusiasm, and people just work hard to make Georgetown a really viable place, a place that is not just…It’s lovely in itself, and the history, but a place that people can enjoy with their families now. When Joe and I moved here, I think my son Joseph had one little friend who lived down on O Street and that was it. Now there are little buggies parked out of every household.
Linda: I know, isn’t that sweet.
Ella: Yesterday, I was walking down to Staples, and I saw a double carrier being pushed by the nannies. There’s vibrancy now, and with young families coming in, I hope that the Citizens Association is going full speed ahead.
Linda: Yeah, stronger than ever.
Ella: OK, and the business association?
Linda: Business association, I don’t think is as strong as it used to be mainly because of the BID. The BID is the Business Improvement District. It does so much. I think the business association and, this has been for a while, is kind of struggling with who they are.
Ella: Identity.
Linda: Their identity.
Ella: OK.
Linda: But they are still going strong, Sonya Bernhardt, the publisher of The Georgetowner, is the chair now, so they seem to be doing…They are holding on. But I remember…
Cathy: They’ve also have improved the schools so much.
Ella: Yes.
Linda: Hugely.
Ella: Yes.
Cathy: That’s going to encourage younger people with children to live here.
Ella: Oh indeed, indeed. That’s good because I know the Anthony Hyde School. Dr. Rackley, my friend from Christ Church, his granddaughter I think goes there. He was telling me one day, her mother came to get her, and she was so upset because they had to interrupt her chess game after school.
[laughter]
Ella: That’s good, and just improvements everywhere. Coming back here, I’m here for two weeks now.
Linda: How does that feel?
Ella: Oh, it’s wonderful. I love coming back here and finding out what’s going on in Oak Hill, in the community. I come back three or four times a year. Sometimes to do some work for David and help out with a couple of projects he has. It is a wonderful privilege to come back to Oak Hill and to find out what’s going on and all of the improvements that are being made. Oak Hill has a wonderful board. George Hill, David de Vicq, Marisa Bourgoin and Loretta Castaldi
Linda: Gosh, George Hill has been on it forever!
Ella: Yes.
[pause]
Ella: Loretta Castaldi and Marisa Bourgoin. With the board and David Jackson, things are just going so well. George Hill is an amazing president of the board. Very attuned with what it’s going to take to keep Oak Hill viable and part of the community. It’s all good.
Linda: Why “Oak Hill.” Are there lots of oak trees?
Ella: You know what? Probably so, and I have no idea.
Cathy: Maybe Mr. Corcoran?
Ella: Maybe Mr. Corcoran thought that would be a great name.
Linda: It’s a beautiful name actually. It’s lovely.
Ella: It is. It’s apply named. I assure you of that because our oak trees are quite magnificent. The topography of the cemetery… part of it is natural and part of it are man-made terraces. I guess George de la Roche who was a civil engineer created these terraces. Which actually was very smart because water picks up speed going downhill, and so terraces would slow the water.
Cathy: You need flat surfaces to bury people.
Ella: That’s right. There is no use of backhoes. All the grave work is done by hand.
Cathy: Is it really?
Ella: Yes. The men dig.
Cathy: …To this day?
Ella: Yes. As we speak.
Linda: Why is that?
Ella: There’s no place to put a backhoe. The backhoe person would be tumbling down the hill. Our men dig all the graves by hand with pick and shovel.
Linda: …By necessity?
Ella: Yes. By necessity, mainly.
Cathy: Do they bury in the winter?
Ella: Sometimes, obviously. This past winter I don’t think they did any burials.
Linda: What do you do when you don’t…?
Ella: Back in the day, there are four crypts in the chapel…under the floor in the chapel. When bodies could not be buried, they would move the pews and put them in these vaults. Nowadays, I think the funeral home keeps the bodies at the home. Unless it’s just bitter, bitter cold for a long, long time, the ground is only frozen down maybe 8 to 10 inches. That initial break, and then they…
Cathy: They can do it?
Ella: Joe, when he first came here, he and the guys dug up the graves and you really work up a sweat! One day I went out to see him and steam was coming off of him because it was cold, but he was really hot.
[laughter]
Ella: It is quite labor intensive, as one would imagine, but our guys, that’s what they do. We’ve got a lot of cremation sites that are under stairs and under pathways. It’s not as labor intensive to remove a covering stone and put the urns in.
For even casket burials, which are under some of our pathways, we’re moving pieces of Buckingham Slate and then putting them back. It’s so much easier than digging a grave. For our men, it is somewhat better. You wonder how they did it back in the day. They did it like we do it, with shovels and pits.
Cathy: Yeah, you’re still doing it the same way!
Ella: [laughs] Yeah, we’re still doing it the same way.
Cathy: It’s a lot hotter in the summer!
Ella: Oh, I know! Oh, gosh, our guys have really earned their keep! That’s another thing about Oak Hill. We have a crew of five men. Brian, the head groundskeeper has probably been here since 1986. Brian Williamson. That is really remarkable in so many ways. But the other men, there are four other men. Minor Pinar Torres, Abraham Mejia, Jose Guzman, and Ricardo Haraujo. He’s the new guy. They are here and when it snows they pick each other up and make sure they’re here to clear the sidewalks. Ricardo drives from Stafford, Virginia every day.
Cathy: No kidding!
Ella: Yes. But the board has taken care of them as far as an amazing, wonderful wage, bonuses, and really, really they take care of them very well. In return, there is such loyalty here from the groundskeepers. Which is really what makes Oak Hill unique. I guess I shouldn’t say what makes Oak Hill unique. Oak Hill is very attuned to the needs of their groundskeepers, making a living wage, supporting a family.
Remarkably, Minor, one of our groundskeepers before I left maybe in 2010, had a terrible reaction to an antibiotic and was gravely ill at the Washington Hospital Center. I went to see him along with one of the board members, and when we walked away I said, “Poor Minor, it’s probably just over for him.” But the board kept paying him the whole time he was in the hospital.
Linda: Nice!
Ella: He recovered. He came back. He would work two hours a day and go home. Then half a day, and now he’s back full time.
But, the board paid him his weekly wage every day. Every week, for three, four months, they didn’t stop his pay while he was at the Washington Hospital Center, unconscious. The board is extremely cognizant of the needs of all of their workers. That is a real tribute to them. They are not just “grave diggers.” They are professionals and they’re treated that way.
Linda: That’s interesting. That’s good to know.
Ella: They really appreciate what they do. Jose became a citizen, and Joe helped sponsor him and fund him. Jose Guzman is a citizen, now, so he’s very proud of that. That’s something to be proud of.
Linda: This is great. We are at about an hour. Oh my Gosh, we are over an hour and a half. Any final questions? You always ask a good ending question.
Cathy: No, no.
[laughter]
Ella: Do I miss it? Yes.
Cathy: I bet you do!
Ella: I do, yes. But there comes a time when retirement is in the thought process. I had been here 28 years and it became time, and it was left in good hands.
Cathy: How wonderful you have the opportunity to come back and sub for your successor for a couple of weeks and enjoy your former community.
Ella: I do, and seeing friends, and having dinner, and seeing people in the community. It is. I’m truly blessed to be able to do this. David told me before I left, he said, “I want you to plan to come here every August. I have more projects I want you to do.” I enjoy history. I enjoyed research.
Cathy: Is your husband buried here?
Ella: He is buried here, yes he is. He is down in one of the pathway crypts. It’s a very special place. I will be here someday, myself.
Linda: Oh, good.
Ella: Part of me, I’ll probably be cremated. I’m a North Carolina girl.
Cathy: Some of you will be there.
Ella: Some of me will be…Yes, I know, so I’ll come. One more interesting thing… My husband had a very, not sure what to say, an offbeat sense of humor. We hadn’t been here, but just maybe a few years. We were sitting right here, in this very room, at the dinner table. He said, “I’ve been thinking about our tombstone, what our tombstone would say.” I said, “Well, you have? Well, that’s very…” He said, “Yes, I’ve been thinking about this.” I said, “OK, what is our tombstone going to say?” He said, “It’s going to say, Joseph Pozell, superintendent of Oak Hill Cemetery, whatever the dates are.” OK?
Then, he said, “We are going to have your name and underneath that, it’s going to say, Mistress of Oak Hill.”
You know what? That’s exactly what our tombstone says. He said, “Because you are the mistress of Oak Hill.” I said, “I guess I am.” He said,” You overstate, but that’s what you are. You are the mistress of Oak Hill.” That’s what our tombstone says.
Cathy: That’s very nice.
Ella: It already has our names on it.
Linda: Does it already?
Ella: It does. Joe, of course, and we were going to put my beginning day, October 28th, 1944. Our son said, “Oh mom, no, don’t do this. It’s like we’re waiting.” He said, “Don’t put your name. Don’t put the date on there.” It has my name and it has “Mistress of Oak Hill,” so that says it all.
Cathy: It does.
Ella: Yes.
Cathy: Thank you so much.
Linda: This was great; it was wonderful.
Transcription by CastingWords
Ella Pozell August 27, 2016
Oak Hill Cemetery, Georgetown, Washington, DC.
Interviewers: Linda Greenan and Cathy Farrell
Linda: It’s August 27, 2016. We’re visiting with Ella Pozell, P O Z E L L, at Oak Hill Cemetery. She and her husband, Joe, were long time superintendents of Oak Hill. We’re here to talk to her about her remembrances, and what she knows about the history. It’s Linda Greenan and Cathy Farrell. Hello.
Ella: Hello. I am so pleased to do this because Oak Hill has a special place in my heart. My late husband and I were here… I was here 28 years and he was here 20 years. We came in 1984, and he became the superintendent soon thereafter. After his death in 2005, I became the superintendent and stayed until I retired, September 2012.
Oak Hill is just an amazing, lovely historic place. As many people know it was founded by William Wilson Corcoran. He bought the original 15 acres in 1849 from Lewis Washington and George Corbin Washington, I think. We need to check that, make sure the first name is correct.
Anyway, he bought the land from them, the original land in 1849. It was chartered by Congress on March 3rd, 1849 because, at that time, that was the only government here in the district. Congress took care of all the regulatory and statutory things of the District.
March 3rd, ’49 was the charter. The first burial was a young lady named Eleanor Ann Washington, who was the daughter of George Corbin Washington, the man who had sold land to Mr. Corcoran.
Linda: Was he known as the mayor of Georgetown, Mr. Washington?
Ella: He might have been, I don’t know.
[crosstalk]
Linda: I don’t remember that.
Ella: She was interred here, April 1849, so a very early burial. The north part, what we call the North Hill area of the cemetery, was laid out first. The lots were sold there first. Mr. Corcoran has his mausoleum there, which is very prominently displayed. That is the oldest section of the cemetery.
That is also the section where the Carroll mausoleum is. In 1862, when Willie Lincoln died, he was interred in the Carroll mausoleum. William Thomas Carroll was a Supreme Court clerk. He was a good friend of President Lincoln.
When Willie died in 1862, the Carrolls gave permission for him to be interred there. When President Lincoln was assassinated, Willie was taken out of the mausoleum and taken back to Illinois with his father.
During the Civil War, Mr. Corcoran bought another 10 acres, which is now what we call our East Side of the cemetery to make the current 25 acres of the cemetery. It is the “new section” done in 1865 or during the Civil War. It was 1865, the turn of the Civil War.
Probably the most active time of the cemetery was during the Civil War. We have quite a few Civil War generals here and later, after the Civil War. Edwin Stanton who was Lincoln’s Secretary of War is buried here, and quite a few, as I said, generals who were both North and South.
Cathy: Oh, I didn’t know that, North and South?
Ella: North and South, yes. Cadmus Marcellus Wilcox was a Southern general and he’s buried here. Then, of course, a lot of Union generals are here.
Cathy: Can I ask? How was it that Southern Confederate generals would have been here?
Ella: Mr. Corcoran was a Southern sympathizer. He went to England during the Civil War to try to raise money for the South. Actually, Washington was a Southern town in many ways. I remember when Joe and I first came here, I was doing some research at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the archives there.
In looking at various newspaper articles and comments in the newspaper. I remember one. I laughed out loud because there was an article about Mr. Corcoran and his creating the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
Also, he founded the Louise Home for Women who, as he said, through no fault of their own became indigent because they had lost either their husbands or had never married. The Louise Home was over on Massachusetts Avenue. He created the Louise Home for these women. It was named in honor of his wife, Louise, and his deceased daughter, Louise.
One of the editorials said, “We are so grateful for Mr. Corcoran’s contributions to the city and we forgive him for being on the Southern side during the Civil War.” [laughs] That was a good thing they forgave him for that. I never forgot that.
Cathy: What paper was that?
Ella: It was just one of the local papers. Somebody had clipped this to say, “Thank you, Mr. Corcoran and we do forgive you for being very involved.” There was always something interesting.
I have this in the file here that someone came collecting money for an organization to support women who had fallen on hard times. Mr. Corcoran gave a donation, and he said, “I only want just the interest on the money to be spent because we know that no woman or group of women could spend the entire amount.”
[laughter]
Ella: That’s what Mr. Corcoran felt, so that’s OK.
Cathy: Did he live here? Did he live in this house?
Ella: No, he did not. No, he lived down, actually at Lafayette Square in one of those homes. The Renwick Gallery I believe was his home at one point or near there. I should know that, but I’m sorry I don’t. He was down near the White House. No, the Gatehouse, has always been the residence of the superintendent.
It has been here since the cemetery was established in 1849. Obviously, it has been added on to numerous times for indoor plumbing, indoors kitchen and so on. Mr. Corcoran never lived here.
Yes, there were many burials during the Civil War. The Peter family, who own Tudor place, actually had two very tragic things happen. William Orton William and his cousin Walton Gibson Peter were cousins and were Confederate officers in the Southern Army.
They were down near Franklin, Tennessee. They thought it would be a great joke to dress up as Union officers and go across the enemy lines. They were captured, and they were hanged the next day. Their monument and their burial site are just behind the chapel.
You’ll see it was June 2nd, 1863. The Union was not amused. One of the cousins had his credentials in his hat. They were captured and hanged the next day. That was a tragedy for the family.
Linda: They were the Peter family?
Ella: The Peter family, yes. One of them was engaged to Robert E. Lee’s daughter so that was a very tragic thing for the Peter family. They did manage to get their bodies back up here in the church. It might have been much later than their death day, but they were brought back.
Linda: Was this viewed even at the time or anytime, was Oak Hill viewed as a place for people with means or were there ordinary people?
Ella: Probably at that time Mr. Corcoran wanted an in-town burial place. At that time, probably it would have been for people of ordinary means. A lot of times they could make payments, $10 a month or something like that. Space now has become more precious and the sites not quite as abundant.
Probably it was an ordinary place back then, but there were a lot of prominent people who did end up here. A lot of the cemeteries back in the 19th century were on people’s estates and church yards. Of course, Congressional Cemetery is older than Oak Hill as is Rock Creek. Those were “suburban” cemeteries.
This was a needed in-town cemetery. Mr. Corcoran was a visionary in that respect. As the years progressed, obviously, the burials did. The list of notable people who were entered here became quite long. We do have a brochure that lists some of the prominent ones. Let me get it so that I won’t miss anybody that might be of note.
Ella: The members of the Peter family, the two confederate officers were William Orton Williams and his cousin Walter Gibson Peter. Walter Gibson Peter was engaged to Robert E. Lee’s daughter, and they were hanged in 1863.
Cathy: Sad story.
Linda: Yes. What were they thinking?
Ella: I know. I know. Sometimes as with these jokes, the other side is not amused. The early years of the cemetery, William Corcoran was the founder. Captain George De La Rouche was an engineer who graded and plotted the cemetery. The early lots were laid out by him. One of the notable things in the early days was the building of the Renwick Chapel.
James Renwick designed the Chapel. He also designed the Smithsonian Castle and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City. He was a good friend of Mr. Corcoran. The gatehouse, which is also a prominent structure here, has been the residence of the superintendent since the cemetery was established. We’re not really sure who designed it. It’s Italianate style. As good as our records are sometimes things are just missing.
We have quite a few women of interest here at the cemetery. Marsha Burnes Van Ness was one of them. Her father owned the land where the White House is now. Her father was called one of the most obstinate men who ever lived.
[laughter]
Ella: That’s the way it is sometimes. Anyway, she married John Peter Van Ness who was a congressman from New York. They founded the Washington Orphan Asylum. They have a lovely mausoleum here which when it was originally built, was down where China Town is now. It was dismantled and brought here so that’s where the family is now.
She was helping out in the cholera epidemic, and she contracted cholera and died. Her husband lived on after her.
Linda: He was a Van Ness?
Ella: He was a Van Ness.
Linda: And her father was…
Ella: Davey Burnes. We have it as B U R N E S, and you see various spellings of course as things were back then.
Linda: With an E?
Ella: Yes.
Cathy: He owned the property where the White House is?
Ella: Her father did, yes.
Cathy: Her father?
Ella: Yes.
Linda: Wow.
Ella: Peggy O’Neil Eaton has quite a reputation. There’s even a movie called “The Gorgeous Hussy.” She was a tavern keeper’s daughter, and Senator John Eaton who was a senator from Tennessee frequented or stayed at her father’s tavern or the inn. She was married at the time.
Word came that her husband had committed suicide at sea, but it may have been that he heard that she had been seen walking or talking with Senator Eaton. They married. It actually split President Andrew Jackson’s cabinet. The wives would not receive her nor did they want to be associated with her. What Andrew Jackson did was make her husband an ambassador to Spain and sent them abroad.
[laughter]
Ella: They solved that little problem. She came back and, actually, we have pictures here in the cemetery and our archives of the Peggy O’Neil Eaton lot. There’s also a picture of her. She never had a tombstone. Her husband had this huge obelisk, Senator John Eaton, and all his accomplishments, but her name was never on the stone until maybe about 10 years ago.
A group came in filming an article about the cemetery, I think it was NBC, and they put her name on the stone.
Cathy: No kidding!
Ella: She said she wanted her tombstone to say she was never dull.
[laughter]
Ella: I think that’s quite a legacy. I bet she was never dull.
Linda: Did they have children?
Ella: Yes they did. In fact, Peggy’s granddaughter ran off with Peggy’s much younger dance instructor and took a great deal of her money.
Linda: It’s interesting to me that he would have been buried here and not in Tennessee.
Ella: A lot of people who are buried here are from other states
[crosstalk]
Cathy: You have some Illinois residents, as well.
Ella: Senator Gale McGee from Wyoming is buried here. Many congressmen and senators get “Potomac” fever and they never leave. This becomes home. We have so many people who, when Joe and I were dealing with people coming in to get burial sites, said, “This is home now. We grew up in Illinois or we grew up in San Francisco, but we came here, children were born here, we worked here.” This becomes home for a lot. They just don’t go back.
Another woman was Myrtilla Miner, who established the first school for African American girls in Washington. Miner Teachers College was named for her.
Cathy: That was part of Howard University?
Ella: Yes, that is correct. Yes.
Cathy: It came up in another interview I did a couple weeks ago with some people from the Zion Methodist Church.
Ella: Oh, yes, OK. Another woman of interest is EDEN Southworth. Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworths was a Georgetown resident who wrote over 70 romance novels. Also there were interesting women who were spies. Everybody always wants to know, “Who were the spies?” These were all Confederate spies. Lillie Mackall was a member of the Rose O’Neal Greenhow spy ring.
Cathy: Will you spell her name?
Ella: Yes. L I L L I E, M A C K A L L. She was very good at listening at keyholes and riding around in the dark. Unfortunately, she contracted pneumonia and I think she died at 18 or 19. She’s buried just behind the chapel.
Another woman spy was Antonia Ford Willard who lived out in Fairfax. She was spying for the South. She was captured and her captor was General Joseph Willard. Supposedly, he took her to the Fairfax jail, and on the way they fell in love.
[laughter]
Ella: We don’t know how long a carriage ride that was, but long enough, I suppose. He had to promise that he would be kind to the South, and she had to promise she would never spy again, and they got married. He is one of the founders of the Willard hotel. Quite a few years ago, there was an article in “The Washington Post” Sunday magazine titled “The Spy Who Loved Him.” It’s about their romance and their legacy.
She promised not to do that. Another spy was Bettie Duval Webb. She was a spy, part of the Rose O’Neal spy ring, too. She hid messages in her hair and would ride through the countryside giving messages.
Linda: Amazing.
Ella: I know. Truly amazing!
Linda: They’re buried here?
Ella: They’re buried here.
Linda: Is that because of Mr. Corcoran?
Ella: I don’t know.
Cathy: They probably lived in Virginia?
Ella: Yes. I’d have to check the dates. Lillie Mackall and Antonia Ford Willard died before Mr. Corcoran. These families might have owned lots in here prior to the war. We’ve talked about Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s secretary of war, William Thomas Carroll, who had the Carroll Mausoleum where Lincoln was placed.
Linda: Who was he? Do we know who Mr. Carroll was?
Ella: All we know is a Supreme Court clerk. Probably there are thousands of bits of information on the Internet.
[http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=14448183]
Cathy: Is it C A R R O L L?
Ella: Yes, like the Carrolls from Maryland. Yes, that is correct. Richard Merrick is buried here. He was the attorney for John Surratt. As we know, John Surratt was eventually caught. He escaped and went to England. He was finally caught in Rome. He became a guard at the Vatican. He was brought back for a trial, but it was a hung jury, so he was never convicted. He escaped any kind of punishment. John Nicolay was Lincoln’s secretary and biographer. You’ve probably heard that name. Andrew Riley was the Supreme Court judge who issued a writ of habeas corpus for Mrs. Surratt, but President Johnson suspended it. She was subsequently hanged. Let’s see.
Cathy: She’s not buried here?
Ella: Who?
Cathy: Mrs. Surratt.
Linda: It was just the judge?
Ella: Yeah, just Andrew Riley. She’s buried, I think, out in…
Linda: Maryland.
Ella: In Maryland somewhere. There is a whole list of generals who are buried here. Joseph K. Barnes was Surgeon General at the time of the President’s assassination. He was with Lincoln on the night that he was assassinated, not at Ford’s Theater, but across the street at the Petersen house.
General Albert Pike was a Confederate general and he was removed from Oak Hill to the Masonic Temple in Washington, DC in December of 1944. I guess another claim to fame is that he was one of the founding members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Cadmus Marcellus Wilcox is another Confederate general.
Jesse Reno, was a Union general for whom Reno Nevada is names. A friend of his was on the railroad commission. They were naming towns and so on for people that maybe we’ve never heard of, but anyway, this friend was a friend of Jesse Reno’s. Jesse Reno was killed at the Battle of South Mountain.
Linda: It’s interesting to me, too, Reno Road, Van Ness …when you hear all these names…
[crosstalk]
Ella: Oh, yes. The Huidekopers are out here. There’s a Huidekoper family. It really is quite remarkable how so many names linger all these many years later. We have quite a few artists, writers, inventors, and designers. Herman Hollerith is buried here. In fact, his daughters, the last one, Nannie, I believe, died during the time that I was here.
His family had a house down on 29th Street. It was three stories. Each of the daughters had their own story in the house. He invented the punch card, and later on, his company was sold to a company that became IBM.
Linda: That’s right.
Ella: Paul Pelz was the designer of the Library of Congress. Joseph Henry was the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and discovered electromagnetism.
Adolf Cluss was the architect of the Agriculture Department, the Washington Penitentiary where the Lincoln conspirators were hanged. Henry Ulke was a portrait painter. His portrait of President Grant still hangs in the White House. Henry Ulke was a border at the Petersen house where Lincoln died. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ulke]
A very prominent statue on the grounds of Oak Hill is that of John Howard Payne. There is a bust of him atop an obelisk. John Howard Payne wrote “Home Sweet Home.” John Howard Payne had also been an actor and Corcoran admired his work. Later on in John Howard Payne’s life, he became part of a diplomatic corps and went to Tunisia where he died.
William Corcoran had a bust created of John Howard Payne as a young man atop an obelisk in the ellipse. There was a great unveiling. The President was here. I think it was Chester Arthur. The United States Senate, the House, John Philip Sousa’s band was here. I actually found the program for that day at a flea market.
Cathy: Really?
Ella: Yes.
Linda: Amazing.
Ella: We have the program for when this was dedicated. At the unveiling, they unveiled it, and John Howard Payne had a beard. Corcoran had never known him with a beard so he had the beard shaved.
[laughter]
Ella: I guess that’s the only statue I know of in the cemetery that’s had a shave, but he is clean-shaven and whatever Mr. Corcoran wanted, Mr. Corcoran got. It’s quite a lovely monument, and we actually had a rededication while I was here 100 years after the dedication. There was a gentleman who was very interested in John Howard Payne, and we had a little program out there on the ellipse one Sunday afternoon, June 9, 1991. It was quite nice, The original dedication might have been in 1891. Anyway, John Howard Payne’s remains were brought back here from Tunisia. Yes, he is buried here.
William Tyler Page is the author of the Americans’ Creed, which I remember from the DAR. We say that at the beginning every meeting, and it is on his tombstone. The whole thing is on his tombstone.
I’m jumping around. Major John Adlum was a Revolutionary War soldier, a captain in the War of 1812 and he developed the Catawba Grape.
Reverend Stephen Bloomer Balch was a Revolutionary War soldier and he was also the pastor of the Georgetown Presbyterian Church for over 50 years, and that evolved into the Presbyterian Church on P Street. It used to be over where Volta Park is now and the cemetery was there and a lot of people were moved here from Volta Park.
Cathy: I was going to say they were really old.
Ella: Yes, and when they built the swimming pool over there, they were extremely surprised to find bones. You don’t get everybody if you move a cemetery. But Reverend Balch was a…
Linda: Wait, are you saying that where Volta Park is was also a cemetery?
Ella: Correct.
Cathy: Churchyard.
Ella: The churchyard. It was called the Bridge Street Presbyterian Church and the Volta Park was a cemetery.
Linda: I’ll be darned. Now the Presbyterian church…
Ella: Is down on P Street, yes. A lot of the remains were brought here. We have many, many people that were originally interred…
Cathy: Other places. I didn’t realize that church had moved there, but I knew that that was Bridge and High Street. Wisconsin was called High Street.
Linda: Talk a little bit about when you first came to the cemetery as the superintendent. I did not realize that you came first, before Joe.
Ella: No, he did.
Linda: Oh, he did. Oh, I’m sorry.
Ella: He came in ’84 and then when he died in 2005 I became superintendent. Yeah, 2005.
Linda: Oh, OK. I thought when you said in the beginning that you were here first, but then…
Ella: No, no. He was here first.
Linda: But he came first and then you two, then you married, or…?
Ella: Oh no, no, we were already married when we came here. Yes, we got married in 1975, so we came here in 1984 together, and our son Joseph came with us. Joseph was five years old when we came here.
It just is such an amazingly interesting job. He and I never dreaded a single day at work because we knew we were always going to learn something. People would come in doing research and telling us about their families and just, studying the whole history of the cemetery, the people who were buried here, historical figures of a long time ago and contemporary ones.
There was always something to learn and people to meet, and it was just an incredible job that Joe loved, I loved, and as I say, I never dreaded a single day. I looked forward to each day here. It was really fun. I guess fun is not the word, but the burial part of it, you do have to have a bit of, I guess they call it, detached professionalism.
You feel for the families and their loss and so many times after the burial, people come in and have coffee with us and they just talk. That’s a big part of the job, is just talking and…
Linda: Comfort?
Ella: Yes, yes. Having a cup of coffee or glass of tea or something. That part I really enjoyed, as did Joe. You just learn so much about families and the struggles they’ve had, the happiness they’ve had, and they will really open up to you about anything that you think, “Oh, I don’t know if I should know that but…”
The funniest thing is when people are doing research and you have the big plot books, you open them up. Each lot in the cemetery has a page in this big book that we keep. We open up the lot 200 and somebody’s doing research and they start down the line, writing down the people who are buried here, when they were buried and invariably someone would say, “How did she get buried here? Nobody ever liked her and she was the second wife.”
[laughter]
Ella: We say, “Well, you know, that was really before our time, that was in 1932 and so we don’t know.” Invariably, there are always amusing things that people say and, sometimes inadvertently you get a little chuckle out of it but…
Linda: I wonder did you know when you were coming here how great it was going to be and how historic it was but also, it seems like, tell me if this is wrong, that it’s kind of unique, in terms of, it’s clearly a unique cemetery, but it’s unique in that it’s really part of the community. You and Joe were so much part of Georgetown…
Ella: Thank you.
Linda: That seems like that’s sort of unique too.
Ella: It is, because so many of the cemeteries where the superintendent lived had a gate-house or whatever. Oak Hill is probably one of the few remaining that still does [where the superintendent lives].
Many gatehouses have become offices or storage facilities or visitor centers and so I think that is one thing that really, being here all the time, there are obviously sometimes you feel like you’re always on the job. In another sense, so many times Joe and I would, after hours… any time there had been a burial, we would always visit that site that day, that night, after we closed up.
Joe was very pragmatic. First of all, he wanted to make sure there were no tools left behind when the family came to visit. But just as a matter of like, “OK, here’s a new person and a new family that has suffered this.”
I think if we had driven away and gone to our home in the Northwest or Bethesda or wherever, it wouldn’t be quite the same as just being here. I saw something new almost every time I walked out…saw a new stone, read an inscription that I had missed because there’d been a shrub blooming there in the summer and in the fall the leaves might have covered it.
There was always something new to see. Maybe I would walk behind a tombstone… “Oh. We did not know that that inscription was there.” It is a unique place in that sense, that we had no idea when we came here. In fact, I thought, “Well, maybe we’ll stay here a few years.” Joe had mainly been hired because the former superintendent, George Kackley, needed some grounds-keeping help. I just accidentally fell into it.
George Kackley was a very, very gracious man. When I started working here our son had not started to school. He let me bring Joseph with me every day to work.
Linda: Oh, so you all weren’t living here yet.
Ella: No. We did not live here until Mr. Kackley left. We came in April of 1984 and Mr. Kackley left the next year, April, 1985. No, we lived over on Whitehaven Parkway but Mr. Kackley very nicely let me bring Joseph with me from April until he started school in September.
George Kackley was an amazing historian. I learned a lot just listening to him because he loved research. I think he had taught or been associated with a school down in Alexandria and the history just came alive with him. He was very animated. He was just a really very smart man and I learned a lot of the history of Oak Hill from him. We didn’t move here until after George left.
I had, of course, no idea how this job would evolve in such a way that it really gets into your heart. I think that Dave and Darla Jackson, David now, you know is the superintendent, he’s finding that too. A part of it, there’s the job, you have to do the job.
But just the relationships you have with the people, the families, and so many groups are interested in Oak Hill. I’ve done so many tours, garden clubs, student groups, the DAR ladies, and everybody wants to know about Oak Hill because it is just a real treasure and a real jewel in the city.
Linda: It’s so beautiful.
Ella: It is, it is. It’s exquisite.
Linda: How about some of the contemporary folks who are here now.
Ella: We do have quite a few contemporary people. President Truman’s Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, is buried by the chapel. Also David and Evangeline Bruce. David Bruce was the ambassador to France, England and West Germany. Philip and Katharine Graham are also by the chapel.
Edward Douglass White was a Chief Justice of the United States. And of course Ben Bradlee who was… I guess he was the publisher or editor of the Washington Post. He is now buried here.
Linda: He’s prominently buried here.
Ella: He is, yes, he has a mausoleum on the ellipse, which has been here for about a year now, it will be a year in September or October. Those are the ones who have the most name recognition of contemporary people. Let me think if there are any…Glenn Brenner is buried here.
Linda: Oh yes, oh yes.
Ella: He was a sportscaster on channel 9 for years and years.
Linda: It was so sudden.
Ella: I know and that was a very, very, very big funeral. Many people came to visit his grave. A lot of little old ladies and I’m a little old lady myself now. [laughs] They would come. Everybody listened to his predictions. I guess it was a nun who helped him with the predictions for the football games. I think she was from Georgetown. Sister Mary something…
[crosstalk]
Ella: Yes, I think she was a Visitation nun. Yes. I’m not sure but there was a nun who collaborated with him.
Linda: He was beloved.
Ella: He was very beloved. He really was. Kay Halle, is buried here. She lived down the street and she was in England during the war. She was from Ohio, and I think her family owned a big department store maybe in Cleveland.
She was in London during the war and was part of that whole OSS group. Julia Child was one of them. She and her husband were in the OSS. Kay was quite a colorful character herself so she was interesting to talk to because she had known Winston Churchill and the Churchill family. It was really quite amazing to listen to people of that era.
When Joe had his landscaping business, he worked for Mrs. John Sherman Cooper. John Sherman Cooper was a senator from Kentucky, I believe. She was quite a colorful character too. She had a big party for the Senate every spring and Joe would go and get her garden ready and she would come out in her little caftan and turban, and talk to Joe and tell all that there was to know about the Senate.
[laughter]
Ella: It was always interesting. Joe was hard of hearing, which many people knew and in the early days, really before he got his wonderful, wonderful hearing aids, towards the end of his life. She knew he was hard of hearing and one day he was working in her garden and, you know this is really kind of irrelevant because they’re not buried here but anyway, she said, “Joe, I have a solution for your deafness,” she said, “Come with me.” She had on one of her caftans and he said she said, “Sit down, here on the grass, cross leged and put your thumb in your mouth and blow real hard and that will clean out your ears.”
[laughter]
Ella: Anyway, as I say, an irrelevant story, but this is Georgetown.
Cathy: Did it help?
Ella: No, unfortunately, it did not help. I don’t know if he ever had the heart to tell her or not.
[laughter]
Linda: But that was sweet of her.
Ella: It was very sweet. Yes, yes. Those ladies were lovely ladies and so it was, yes, it was never dull here. Sometimes people say, “Oh a cemetery, man that must have been really depressing and really boring,” and there is nothing boring or depressing about Oak Hill.
Never will be I don’t think. There just is a certain sadness with the families. You feel their loss especially for people who lose children. No matter how a parent is helped. We’ve had 80-year-olds who’ve lost their 40-year-olds and it is extremely sad and it’s just a devastating event for them.
Cathy: I was doing a little research this morning on Oak Hill and I came across a note that President Lincoln would come to the mausoleum where his son was interred. There was a rocking chair in there and he would literally take him out of the casket and hold his body. Is there any truth to that?
[laughter]
Linda: That was David Rothman who said that.
Ella: Yes, there is always a lot of lore concerning a cemetery. There could have been a rocking chair in the place where Willie was buried. Actually it’s interesting because we have a drawing of the entire Carroll Mausoleum, and it doesn’t have Willie Lincoln listed anywhere. We don’t know what niche he was in.
But it could be that he could slide out the casket and I think I have heard this, and again I’m not sure, we have to check our facts on this. I don’t know if part of the casket was glass on top…
Cathy: That’s what I’ve read.
Ella: …that he could see, but as far as taking him out of the casket, I really don’t believe that would be true. But he could visit and I guess if you’re the President of the United States, you just come when you want to.
Interestingly enough, Jefferson Davis had a son buried here too.
Cathy: Really?
Ella: He did. He was removed to Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, VA, May 29, 1873. Joe and I used to say, “Wouldn’t it have been interesting if Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln visited at the same time.” They both had lost children. That, of course, we don’t know. I’m working on a project with Joe Krakora who has just retired from the National Gallery of Art. He and I are working on a documentary about Oak Hill. Part of this documentary is a fictional encounter between Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. Joe Krakora is an amazing, amazing person. He is so smart and he is a wonderful writer. He did a documentary on the founder of the National Gallery. What’s his name?
Cathy: Oh, Andrew Mellon?
Ella: Thank you. Yes. Andrew Mellon. I have a copy of it at home. It’s a CD on Paul Mellon and Joe narrates it and did all the research.
Anyway, we’re working on this documentary, which Joe says he’s going to try to get on PBS. It’ll be about an hour. But a part of this, is, what if they had met? What might they have said and how might this, things are different when it’s one on one.
Cathy: The purpose of their visit.
Ella: Yes, the purpose of the visit. It’s a very interesting dialogue…
Linda: How it may have changed things.
Ella: Hopefully, it will get aired. Actually Joe and I are having breakfast on Tuesday and we’re going to talk about it and everything. But it’s in the works. A lot of the focus is on the children buried at Oak Hill, which there are, I think, about 3,000.
Linda: Is that right?
Ella: It’s a very high number. Yes, a very high number.
Cathy: A lot of children died in those days.
Ella: Yes, and looking at the burials, a lot of our lots now have the burial orders that indicate that children would die of measles, but probably high fever or something. Children would die of mumps.
Cathy: How many people are interred here?
Ella: About 19,600, including cremations. That’s everything. One of the families that I directed Joe Krakora to is the White family over by the Van Ness Mausoleum. They lost five children in one month.
Cathy: Oh my gosh…
Ella: In December of 1878. At the very bottom of the tombstone it says, “Thy will be done.” Now, how anybody can do that, I don’t know.
Linda: Really, really.
Ella: Five children in one month.
Linda: What was…?
Ella: Scarlet fever.
Linda: Scarlet fever.
Ella: You look around and you see a lot of little lambs. The cemetery statuary is interesting too. You see little lambs. That’s usually where a child is buried. You see an upside down torch. That usually means someone died before their time. A lot of urns that are draped. They looks like have a cloth draped over. That’s a sign of mourning. Lilies are symbolic of eternal life. There is lots of symbolism in these cemeteries.
Oak Hill is part of what is called the Garden Cemetery Movement, which started around 1836. I guess the queen of the Garden Cemetery Movement cemeteries is Mount Auburn, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Amazing cemetery.
The board just went there about a month ago to visit. Then, there’s Laurel Hill in Philadelphia. Of course, Oak Hill is one. There are not many left that are…They’re still part of the garden cemetery movement, but maybe not quite on the scale or the grandeur of Mount Auburn and Laurel Hill and Oak Hill.
They were designed to be almost like a park, a place for people to go, take picnic baskets on Sundays, and commune with their deceased relatives or whatever. It was a place of beauty. I think that Romantic poets always linked death and beauty together in their poems. Yes, there is death but there’s a certain beauty.
The Garden Cemetery Movement cemeteries definitely try to do that. You see a lot of serpentine paths and lovely bushes and shrubs. Things that are peaceful, I guess, is the word.
Anyway, Oak Hill definitely has that, and that has been what the board and the superintendents through years have tried to maintain. The planting, the landscape of the cemetery remains romantic for lack of a better word.
Linda: They have. It’s just beautiful.
Ella: Yes. A lot of the trees here are probably some of the oldest in the city because during the Civil War a lot of trees were cut for the forts.
Linda: Really?
Ella: Yes, our trees couldn’t cut because it was a private property. We have some really old trees.
Cathy: I have been here for a wedding in that little chapel. Does that happen on a regular basis?
Ella: It does. Yes, we do have weddings here on occasion. Obviously, it’s a small wedding. The chapel sits about 50 people. Joe and I had several weddings while we were here, and David Jackson has done quite a few weddings.
It’s a lovely setting and sometimes people just want a little place, intimate and historic. It does lend itself to small weddings, and we’ve done quite a few of those. Who was the wedding with?
Cathy: I can’t remember it. It was about 40 years ago.
[laughter]
Ella: OK.
Cathy: They lived in one of the red brick houses across the street.
Ella: I know one we did was for the gentleman who owns the Old Town Trolley that goes by. He and his wife got married here, and every time one of the trolleys went by, “clang, clang, clang!”
[laughter]
Ella: That was fun. That was a happy day for them.
Cathy: Let’s see, I guess, life in the Georgetown….
Ella: I beg your pardon?
Cathy: Address yours and Joe’s life as really being part of the larger community, not just as it related to the cemetery.
Ella: One thing we did, we joined the Georgetown Citizens Association when we started living here, and Joe became a member of the business association. That is how you become a part of a community. You build relationships. We were always talking about Oak Hill, and trying to get people interested in it. As the years went by more and more people became very attuned to problems of Oak Hill. When you have a 19th century cemetery in the 21st century, there are issues and there are things to be dealt with.
We found that the community was so welcoming and I know, even living down North Carolina, I said, “Woo, Georgetown.” It was probably very snooty, but no.
The people were so welcoming, and wanted to really make a difference in the community itself. I know one time Joe and I were walking down…It was in the summertime, and we were walking down to have dinner somewhere. Joe was always attuned to landscaping and he said, “Just look at these weeds! Just look at these weeds in these tree boxes along the way.”
I said, “Joe, you know, people are away in the summertime.” “No, they need to make sure that their gardener takes the weeds out of them. The tree boxes. Look at those weeds.” Now you may see so many well tended little tree boxes right by the curb.
Linda: He became the chair of the beautification.
Ella: Yes, he did.
Linda: That’s when he…He handled that one!
[laughter]
[crosstalk]
Ella: He was looking for beautification. He joined the Friends of Montrose Park and helped clean up that. I don’t know if he was as involved when they did the area behind Dumbarton Oaks. That area was OK, and he might have helped a bit.
Cathy: That was Bill Corcoran.
Ella: OK, yes. I think it is an amazing community, and I’m so glad the Citizen’s Association is doing this project to further enhance the appreciation of what is here, what has been here, what we hope will remain here. That is extremely important, and the business association that Joe was involved in, too, again, and the university. There have always been town-gown issues.
I think there’s really a real enthusiasm, and people just work hard to make Georgetown a really viable place, a place that is not just…It’s lovely in itself, and the history, but a place that people can enjoy with their families now. When Joe and I moved here, I think my son Joseph had one little friend who lived down on O Street and that was it. Now there are little buggies parked out of every household.
Linda: I know, isn’t that sweet.
Ella: Yesterday, I was walking down to Staples, and I saw a double carrier being pushed by the nannies. There’s vibrancy now, and with young families coming in, I hope that the Citizens Association is going full speed ahead.
Linda: Yeah, stronger than ever.
Ella: OK, and the business association?
Linda: Business association, I don’t think is as strong as it used to be mainly because of the BID. The BID is the Business Improvement District. It does so much. I think the business association and, this has been for a while, is kind of struggling with who they are.
Ella: Identity.
Linda: Their identity.
Ella: OK.
Linda: But they are still going strong, Sonya Bernhardt, the publisher of The Georgetowner, is the chair now, so they seem to be doing…They are holding on. But I remember…
Cathy: They’ve also have improved the schools so much.
Ella: Yes.
Linda: Hugely.
Ella: Yes.
Cathy: That’s going to encourage younger people with children to live here.
Ella: Oh indeed, indeed. That’s good because I know the Anthony Hyde School. Dr. Rackley, my friend from Christ Church, his granddaughter I think goes there. He was telling me one day, her mother came to get her, and she was so upset because they had to interrupt her chess game after school.
[laughter]
Ella: That’s good, and just improvements everywhere. Coming back here, I’m here for two weeks now.
Linda: How does that feel?
Ella: Oh, it’s wonderful. I love coming back here and finding out what’s going on in Oak Hill, in the community. I come back three or four times a year. Sometimes to do some work for David and help out with a couple of projects he has. It is a wonderful privilege to come back to Oak Hill and to find out what’s going on and all of the improvements that are being made. Oak Hill has a wonderful board. George Hill, David de Vicq, Marisa Bourgoin and Loretta Castaldi
Linda: Gosh, George Hill has been on it forever!
Ella: Yes.
[pause]
Ella: Loretta Castaldi and Marisa Bourgoin. With the board and David Jackson, things are just going so well. George Hill is an amazing president of the board. Very attuned with what it’s going to take to keep Oak Hill viable and part of the community. It’s all good.
Linda: Why “Oak Hill.” Are there lots of oak trees?
Ella: You know what? Probably so, and I have no idea.
Cathy: Maybe Mr. Corcoran?
Ella: Maybe Mr. Corcoran thought that would be a great name.
Linda: It’s a beautiful name actually. It’s lovely.
Ella: It is. It’s apply named. I assure you of that because our oak trees are quite magnificent. The topography of the cemetery… part of it is natural and part of it are man-made terraces. I guess George de la Roche who was a civil engineer created these terraces. Which actually was very smart because water picks up speed going downhill, and so terraces would slow the water.
Cathy: You need flat surfaces to bury people.
Ella: That’s right. There is no use of backhoes. All the grave work is done by hand.
Cathy: Is it really?
Ella: Yes. The men dig.
Cathy: …To this day?
Ella: Yes. As we speak.
Linda: Why is that?
Ella: There’s no place to put a backhoe. The backhoe person would be tumbling down the hill. Our men dig all the graves by hand with pick and shovel.
Linda: …By necessity?
Ella: Yes. By necessity, mainly.
Cathy: Do they bury in the winter?
Ella: Sometimes, obviously. This past winter I don’t think they did any burials.
Linda: What do you do when you don’t…?
Ella: Back in the day, there are four crypts in the chapel…under the floor in the chapel. When bodies could not be buried, they would move the pews and put them in these vaults. Nowadays, I think the funeral home keeps the bodies at the home. Unless it’s just bitter, bitter cold for a long, long time, the ground is only frozen down maybe 8 to 10 inches. That initial break, and then they…
Cathy: They can do it?
Ella: Joe, when he first came here, he and the guys dug up the graves and you really work up a sweat! One day I went out to see him and steam was coming off of him because it was cold, but he was really hot.
[laughter]
Ella: It is quite labor intensive, as one would imagine, but our guys, that’s what they do. We’ve got a lot of cremation sites that are under stairs and under pathways. It’s not as labor intensive to remove a covering stone and put the urns in.
For even casket burials, which are under some of our pathways, we’re moving pieces of Buckingham Slate and then putting them back. It’s so much easier than digging a grave. For our men, it is somewhat better. You wonder how they did it back in the day. They did it like we do it, with shovels and pits.
Cathy: Yeah, you’re still doing it the same way!
Ella: [laughs] Yeah, we’re still doing it the same way.
Cathy: It’s a lot hotter in the summer!
Ella: Oh, I know! Oh, gosh, our guys have really earned their keep! That’s another thing about Oak Hill. We have a crew of five men. Brian, the head groundskeeper has probably been here since 1986. Brian Williamson. That is really remarkable in so many ways. But the other men, there are four other men. Minor Pinar Torres, Abraham Mejia, Jose Guzman, and Ricardo Haraujo. He’s the new guy. They are here and when it snows they pick each other up and make sure they’re here to clear the sidewalks. Ricardo drives from Stafford, Virginia every day.
Cathy: No kidding!
Ella: Yes. But the board has taken care of them as far as an amazing, wonderful wage, bonuses, and really, really they take care of them very well. In return, there is such loyalty here from the groundskeepers. Which is really what makes Oak Hill unique. I guess I shouldn’t say what makes Oak Hill unique. Oak Hill is very attuned to the needs of their groundskeepers, making a living wage, supporting a family.
Remarkably, Minor, one of our groundskeepers before I left maybe in 2010, had a terrible reaction to an antibiotic and was gravely ill at the Washington Hospital Center. I went to see him along with one of the board members, and when we walked away I said, “Poor Minor, it’s probably just over for him.” But the board kept paying him the whole time he was in the hospital.
Linda: Nice!
Ella: He recovered. He came back. He would work two hours a day and go home. Then half a day, and now he’s back full time.
But, the board paid him his weekly wage every day. Every week, for three, four months, they didn’t stop his pay while he was at the Washington Hospital Center, unconscious. The board is extremely cognizant of the needs of all of their workers. That is a real tribute to them. They are not just “grave diggers.” They are professionals and they’re treated that way.
Linda: That’s interesting. That’s good to know.
Ella: They really appreciate what they do. Jose became a citizen, and Joe helped sponsor him and fund him. Jose Guzman is a citizen, now, so he’s very proud of that. That’s something to be proud of.
Linda: This is great. We are at about an hour. Oh my Gosh, we are over an hour and a half. Any final questions? You always ask a good ending question.
Cathy: No, no.
[laughter]
Ella: Do I miss it? Yes.
Cathy: I bet you do!
Ella: I do, yes. But there comes a time when retirement is in the thought process. I had been here 28 years and it became time, and it was left in good hands.
Cathy: How wonderful you have the opportunity to come back and sub for your successor for a couple of weeks and enjoy your former community.
Ella: I do, and seeing friends, and having dinner, and seeing people in the community. It is. I’m truly blessed to be able to do this. David told me before I left, he said, “I want you to plan to come here every August. I have more projects I want you to do.” I enjoy history. I enjoyed research.
Cathy: Is your husband buried here?
Ella: He is buried here, yes he is. He is down in one of the pathway crypts. It’s a very special place. I will be here someday, myself.
Linda: Oh, good.
Ella: Part of me, I’ll probably be cremated. I’m a North Carolina girl.
Cathy: Some of you will be there.
Ella: Some of me will be…Yes, I know, so I’ll come. One more interesting thing… My husband had a very, not sure what to say, an offbeat sense of humor. We hadn’t been here, but just maybe a few years. We were sitting right here, in this very room, at the dinner table. He said, “I’ve been thinking about our tombstone, what our tombstone would say.” I said, “Well, you have? Well, that’s very…” He said, “Yes, I’ve been thinking about this.” I said, “OK, what is our tombstone going to say?” He said, “It’s going to say, Joseph Pozell, superintendent of Oak Hill Cemetery, whatever the dates are.” OK?
Then, he said, “We are going to have your name and underneath that, it’s going to say, Mistress of Oak Hill.”
You know what? That’s exactly what our tombstone says. He said, “Because you are the mistress of Oak Hill.” I said, “I guess I am.” He said,” You overstate, but that’s what you are. You are the mistress of Oak Hill.” That’s what our tombstone says.
Cathy: That’s very nice.
Ella: It already has our names on it.
Linda: Does it already?
Ella: It does. Joe, of course, and we were going to put my beginning day, October 28th, 1944. Our son said, “Oh mom, no, don’t do this. It’s like we’re waiting.” He said, “Don’t put your name. Don’t put the date on there.” It has my name and it has “Mistress of Oak Hill,” so that says it all.
Cathy: It does.
Ella: Yes.
Cathy: Thank you so much.
Linda: This was great; it was wonderful.
Transcription by CastingWords
Ella Pozell August 27, 2016
Oak Hill Cemetery, Georgetown, Washington, DC.
Interviewers: Linda Greenan and Cathy Farrell
Linda: It’s August 27, 2016. We’re visiting with Ella Pozell, P O Z E L L, at Oak Hill Cemetery. She and her husband, Joe, were long time superintendents of Oak Hill. We’re here to talk to her about her remembrances, and what she knows about the history. It’s Linda Greenan and Cathy Farrell. Hello.
Ella: Hello. I am so pleased to do this because Oak Hill has a special place in my heart. My late husband and I were here… I was here 28 years and he was here 20 years. We came in 1984, and he became the superintendent soon thereafter. After his death in 2005, I became the superintendent and stayed until I retired, September 2012.
Oak Hill is just an amazing, lovely historic place. As many people know it was founded by William Wilson Corcoran. He bought the original 15 acres in 1849 from Lewis Washington and George Corbin Washington, I think. We need to check that, make sure the first name is correct.
Anyway, he bought the land from them, the original land in 1849. It was chartered by Congress on March 3rd, 1849 because, at that time, that was the only government here in the district. Congress took care of all the regulatory and statutory things of the District.
March 3rd, ’49 was the charter. The first burial was a young lady named Eleanor Ann Washington, who was the daughter of George Corbin Washington, the man who had sold land to Mr. Corcoran.
Linda: Was he known as the mayor of Georgetown, Mr. Washington?
Ella: He might have been, I don’t know.
[crosstalk]
Linda: I don’t remember that.
Ella: She was interred here, April 1849, so a very early burial. The north part, what we call the North Hill area of the cemetery, was laid out first. The lots were sold there first. Mr. Corcoran has his mausoleum there, which is very prominently displayed. That is the oldest section of the cemetery.
That is also the section where the Carroll mausoleum is. In 1862, when Willie Lincoln died, he was interred in the Carroll mausoleum. William Thomas Carroll was a Supreme Court clerk. He was a good friend of President Lincoln.
When Willie died in 1862, the Carrolls gave permission for him to be interred there. When President Lincoln was assassinated, Willie was taken out of the mausoleum and taken back to Illinois with his father.
During the Civil War, Mr. Corcoran bought another 10 acres, which is now what we call our East Side of the cemetery to make the current 25 acres of the cemetery. It is the “new section” done in 1865 or during the Civil War. It was 1865, the turn of the Civil War.
Probably the most active time of the cemetery was during the Civil War. We have quite a few Civil War generals here and later, after the Civil War. Edwin Stanton who was Lincoln’s Secretary of War is buried here, and quite a few, as I said, generals who were both North and South.
Cathy: Oh, I didn’t know that, North and South?
Ella: North and South, yes. Cadmus Marcellus Wilcox was a Southern general and he’s buried here. Then, of course, a lot of Union generals are here.
Cathy: Can I ask? How was it that Southern Confederate generals would have been here?
Ella: Mr. Corcoran was a Southern sympathizer. He went to England during the Civil War to try to raise money for the South. Actually, Washington was a Southern town in many ways. I remember when Joe and I first came here, I was doing some research at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the archives there.
In looking at various newspaper articles and comments in the newspaper. I remember one. I laughed out loud because there was an article about Mr. Corcoran and his creating the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
Also, he founded the Louise Home for Women who, as he said, through no fault of their own became indigent because they had lost either their husbands or had never married. The Louise Home was over on Massachusetts Avenue. He created the Louise Home for these women. It was named in honor of his wife, Louise, and his deceased daughter, Louise.
One of the editorials said, “We are so grateful for Mr. Corcoran’s contributions to the city and we forgive him for being on the Southern side during the Civil War.” [laughs] That was a good thing they forgave him for that. I never forgot that.
Cathy: What paper was that?
Ella: It was just one of the local papers. Somebody had clipped this to say, “Thank you, Mr. Corcoran and we do forgive you for being very involved.” There was always something interesting.
I have this in the file here that someone came collecting money for an organization to support women who had fallen on hard times. Mr. Corcoran gave a donation, and he said, “I only want just the interest on the money to be spent because we know that no woman or group of women could spend the entire amount.”
[laughter]
Ella: That’s what Mr. Corcoran felt, so that’s OK.
Cathy: Did he live here? Did he live in this house?
Ella: No, he did not. No, he lived down, actually at Lafayette Square in one of those homes. The Renwick Gallery I believe was his home at one point or near there. I should know that, but I’m sorry I don’t. He was down near the White House. No, the Gatehouse, has always been the residence of the superintendent.
It has been here since the cemetery was established in 1849. Obviously, it has been added on to numerous times for indoor plumbing, indoors kitchen and so on. Mr. Corcoran never lived here.
Yes, there were many burials during the Civil War. The Peter family, who own Tudor place, actually had two very tragic things happen. William Orton William and his cousin Walton Gibson Peter were cousins and were Confederate officers in the Southern Army.
They were down near Franklin, Tennessee. They thought it would be a great joke to dress up as Union officers and go across the enemy lines. They were captured, and they were hanged the next day. Their monument and their burial site are just behind the chapel.
You’ll see it was June 2nd, 1863. The Union was not amused. One of the cousins had his credentials in his hat. They were captured and hanged the next day. That was a tragedy for the family.
Linda: They were the Peter family?
Ella: The Peter family, yes. One of them was engaged to Robert E. Lee’s daughter so that was a very tragic thing for the Peter family. They did manage to get their bodies back up here in the church. It might have been much later than their death day, but they were brought back.
Linda: Was this viewed even at the time or anytime, was Oak Hill viewed as a place for people with means or were there ordinary people?
Ella: Probably at that time Mr. Corcoran wanted an in-town burial place. At that time, probably it would have been for people of ordinary means. A lot of times they could make payments, $10 a month or something like that. Space now has become more precious and the sites not quite as abundant.
Probably it was an ordinary place back then, but there were a lot of prominent people who did end up here. A lot of the cemeteries back in the 19th century were on people’s estates and church yards. Of course, Congressional Cemetery is older than Oak Hill as is Rock Creek. Those were “suburban” cemeteries.
This was a needed in-town cemetery. Mr. Corcoran was a visionary in that respect. As the years progressed, obviously, the burials did. The list of notable people who were entered here became quite long. We do have a brochure that lists some of the prominent ones. Let me get it so that I won’t miss anybody that might be of note.
Ella: The members of the Peter family, the two confederate officers were William Orton Williams and his cousin Walter Gibson Peter. Walter Gibson Peter was engaged to Robert E. Lee’s daughter, and they were hanged in 1863.
Cathy: Sad story.
Linda: Yes. What were they thinking?
Ella: I know. I know. Sometimes as with these jokes, the other side is not amused. The early years of the cemetery, William Corcoran was the founder. Captain George De La Rouche was an engineer who graded and plotted the cemetery. The early lots were laid out by him. One of the notable things in the early days was the building of the Renwick Chapel.
James Renwick designed the Chapel. He also designed the Smithsonian Castle and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City. He was a good friend of Mr. Corcoran. The gatehouse, which is also a prominent structure here, has been the residence of the superintendent since the cemetery was established. We’re not really sure who designed it. It’s Italianate style. As good as our records are sometimes things are just missing.
We have quite a few women of interest here at the cemetery. Marsha Burnes Van Ness was one of them. Her father owned the land where the White House is now. Her father was called one of the most obstinate men who ever lived.
[laughter]
Ella: That’s the way it is sometimes. Anyway, she married John Peter Van Ness who was a congressman from New York. They founded the Washington Orphan Asylum. They have a lovely mausoleum here which when it was originally built, was down where China Town is now. It was dismantled and brought here so that’s where the family is now.
She was helping out in the cholera epidemic, and she contracted cholera and died. Her husband lived on after her.
Linda: He was a Van Ness?
Ella: He was a Van Ness.
Linda: And her father was…
Ella: Davey Burnes. We have it as B U R N E S, and you see various spellings of course as things were back then.
Linda: With an E?
Ella: Yes.
Cathy: He owned the property where the White House is?
Ella: Her father did, yes.
Cathy: Her father?
Ella: Yes.
Linda: Wow.
Ella: Peggy O’Neil Eaton has quite a reputation. There’s even a movie called “The Gorgeous Hussy.” She was a tavern keeper’s daughter, and Senator John Eaton who was a senator from Tennessee frequented or stayed at her father’s tavern or the inn. She was married at the time.
Word came that her husband had committed suicide at sea, but it may have been that he heard that she had been seen walking or talking with Senator Eaton. They married. It actually split President Andrew Jackson’s cabinet. The wives would not receive her nor did they want to be associated with her. What Andrew Jackson did was make her husband an ambassador to Spain and sent them abroad.
[laughter]
Ella: They solved that little problem. She came back and, actually, we have pictures here in the cemetery and our archives of the Peggy O’Neil Eaton lot. There’s also a picture of her. She never had a tombstone. Her husband had this huge obelisk, Senator John Eaton, and all his accomplishments, but her name was never on the stone until maybe about 10 years ago.
A group came in filming an article about the cemetery, I think it was NBC, and they put her name on the stone.
Cathy: No kidding!
Ella: She said she wanted her tombstone to say she was never dull.
[laughter]
Ella: I think that’s quite a legacy. I bet she was never dull.
Linda: Did they have children?
Ella: Yes they did. In fact, Peggy’s granddaughter ran off with Peggy’s much younger dance instructor and took a great deal of her money.
Linda: It’s interesting to me that he would have been buried here and not in Tennessee.
Ella: A lot of people who are buried here are from other states
[crosstalk]
Cathy: You have some Illinois residents, as well.
Ella: Senator Gale McGee from Wyoming is buried here. Many congressmen and senators get “Potomac” fever and they never leave. This becomes home. We have so many people who, when Joe and I were dealing with people coming in to get burial sites, said, “This is home now. We grew up in Illinois or we grew up in San Francisco, but we came here, children were born here, we worked here.” This becomes home for a lot. They just don’t go back.
Another woman was Myrtilla Miner, who established the first school for African American girls in Washington. Miner Teachers College was named for her.
Cathy: That was part of Howard University?
Ella: Yes, that is correct. Yes.
Cathy: It came up in another interview I did a couple weeks ago with some people from the Zion Methodist Church.
Ella: Oh, yes, OK. Another woman of interest is EDEN Southworth. Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworths was a Georgetown resident who wrote over 70 romance novels. Also there were interesting women who were spies. Everybody always wants to know, “Who were the spies?” These were all Confederate spies. Lillie Mackall was a member of the Rose O’Neal Greenhow spy ring.
Cathy: Will you spell her name?
Ella: Yes. L I L L I E, M A C K A L L. She was very good at listening at keyholes and riding around in the dark. Unfortunately, she contracted pneumonia and I think she died at 18 or 19. She’s buried just behind the chapel.
Another woman spy was Antonia Ford Willard who lived out in Fairfax. She was spying for the South. She was captured and her captor was General Joseph Willard. Supposedly, he took her to the Fairfax jail, and on the way they fell in love.
[laughter]
Ella: We don’t know how long a carriage ride that was, but long enough, I suppose. He had to promise that he would be kind to the South, and she had to promise she would never spy again, and they got married. He is one of the founders of the Willard hotel. Quite a few years ago, there was an article in “The Washington Post” Sunday magazine titled “The Spy Who Loved Him.” It’s about their romance and their legacy.
She promised not to do that. Another spy was Bettie Duval Webb. She was a spy, part of the Rose O’Neal spy ring, too. She hid messages in her hair and would ride through the countryside giving messages.
Linda: Amazing.
Ella: I know. Truly amazing!
Linda: They’re buried here?
Ella: They’re buried here.
Linda: Is that because of Mr. Corcoran?
Ella: I don’t know.
Cathy: They probably lived in Virginia?
Ella: Yes. I’d have to check the dates. Lillie Mackall and Antonia Ford Willard died before Mr. Corcoran. These families might have owned lots in here prior to the war. We’ve talked about Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s secretary of war, William Thomas Carroll, who had the Carroll Mausoleum where Lincoln was placed.
Linda: Who was he? Do we know who Mr. Carroll was?
Ella: All we know is a Supreme Court clerk. Probably there are thousands of bits of information on the Internet.
[http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=14448183]
Cathy: Is it C A R R O L L?
Ella: Yes, like the Carrolls from Maryland. Yes, that is correct. Richard Merrick is buried here. He was the attorney for John Surratt. As we know, John Surratt was eventually caught. He escaped and went to England. He was finally caught in Rome. He became a guard at the Vatican. He was brought back for a trial, but it was a hung jury, so he was never convicted. He escaped any kind of punishment. John Nicolay was Lincoln’s secretary and biographer. You’ve probably heard that name. Andrew Riley was the Supreme Court judge who issued a writ of habeas corpus for Mrs. Surratt, but President Johnson suspended it. She was subsequently hanged. Let’s see.
Cathy: She’s not buried here?
Ella: Who?
Cathy: Mrs. Surratt.
Linda: It was just the judge?
Ella: Yeah, just Andrew Riley. She’s buried, I think, out in…
Linda: Maryland.
Ella: In Maryland somewhere. There is a whole list of generals who are buried here. Joseph K. Barnes was Surgeon General at the time of the President’s assassination. He was with Lincoln on the night that he was assassinated, not at Ford’s Theater, but across the street at the Petersen house.
General Albert Pike was a Confederate general and he was removed from Oak Hill to the Masonic Temple in Washington, DC in December of 1944. I guess another claim to fame is that he was one of the founding members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Cadmus Marcellus Wilcox is another Confederate general.
Jesse Reno, was a Union general for whom Reno Nevada is names. A friend of his was on the railroad commission. They were naming towns and so on for people that maybe we’ve never heard of, but anyway, this friend was a friend of Jesse Reno’s. Jesse Reno was killed at the Battle of South Mountain.
Linda: It’s interesting to me, too, Reno Road, Van Ness …when you hear all these names…
[crosstalk]
Ella: Oh, yes. The Huidekopers are out here. There’s a Huidekoper family. It really is quite remarkable how so many names linger all these many years later. We have quite a few artists, writers, inventors, and designers. Herman Hollerith is buried here. In fact, his daughters, the last one, Nannie, I believe, died during the time that I was here.
His family had a house down on 29th Street. It was three stories. Each of the daughters had their own story in the house. He invented the punch card, and later on, his company was sold to a company that became IBM.
Linda: That’s right.
Ella: Paul Pelz was the designer of the Library of Congress. Joseph Henry was the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and discovered electromagnetism.
Adolf Cluss was the architect of the Agriculture Department, the Washington Penitentiary where the Lincoln conspirators were hanged. Henry Ulke was a portrait painter. His portrait of President Grant still hangs in the White House. Henry Ulke was a border at the Petersen house where Lincoln died. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ulke]
A very prominent statue on the grounds of Oak Hill is that of John Howard Payne. There is a bust of him atop an obelisk. John Howard Payne wrote “Home Sweet Home.” John Howard Payne had also been an actor and Corcoran admired his work. Later on in John Howard Payne’s life, he became part of a diplomatic corps and went to Tunisia where he died.
William Corcoran had a bust created of John Howard Payne as a young man atop an obelisk in the ellipse. There was a great unveiling. The President was here. I think it was Chester Arthur. The United States Senate, the House, John Philip Sousa’s band was here. I actually found the program for that day at a flea market.
Cathy: Really?
Ella: Yes.
Linda: Amazing.
Ella: We have the program for when this was dedicated. At the unveiling, they unveiled it, and John Howard Payne had a beard. Corcoran had never known him with a beard so he had the beard shaved.
[laughter]
Ella: I guess that’s the only statue I know of in the cemetery that’s had a shave, but he is clean-shaven and whatever Mr. Corcoran wanted, Mr. Corcoran got. It’s quite a lovely monument, and we actually had a rededication while I was here 100 years after the dedication. There was a gentleman who was very interested in John Howard Payne, and we had a little program out there on the ellipse one Sunday afternoon, June 9, 1991. It was quite nice, The original dedication might have been in 1891. Anyway, John Howard Payne’s remains were brought back here from Tunisia. Yes, he is buried here.
William Tyler Page is the author of the Americans’ Creed, which I remember from the DAR. We say that at the beginning every meeting, and it is on his tombstone. The whole thing is on his tombstone.
I’m jumping around. Major John Adlum was a Revolutionary War soldier, a captain in the War of 1812 and he developed the Catawba Grape.
Reverend Stephen Bloomer Balch was a Revolutionary War soldier and he was also the pastor of the Georgetown Presbyterian Church for over 50 years, and that evolved into the Presbyterian Church on P Street. It used to be over where Volta Park is now and the cemetery was there and a lot of people were moved here from Volta Park.
Cathy: I was going to say they were really old.
Ella: Yes, and when they built the swimming pool over there, they were extremely surprised to find bones. You don’t get everybody if you move a cemetery. But Reverend Balch was a…
Linda: Wait, are you saying that where Volta Park is was also a cemetery?
Ella: Correct.
Cathy: Churchyard.
Ella: The churchyard. It was called the Bridge Street Presbyterian Church and the Volta Park was a cemetery.
Linda: I’ll be darned. Now the Presbyterian church…
Ella: Is down on P Street, yes. A lot of the remains were brought here. We have many, many people that were originally interred…
Cathy: Other places. I didn’t realize that church had moved there, but I knew that that was Bridge and High Street. Wisconsin was called High Street.
Linda: Talk a little bit about when you first came to the cemetery as the superintendent. I did not realize that you came first, before Joe.
Ella: No, he did.
Linda: Oh, he did. Oh, I’m sorry.
Ella: He came in ’84 and then when he died in 2005 I became superintendent. Yeah, 2005.
Linda: Oh, OK. I thought when you said in the beginning that you were here first, but then…
Ella: No, no. He was here first.
Linda: But he came first and then you two, then you married, or…?
Ella: Oh no, no, we were already married when we came here. Yes, we got married in 1975, so we came here in 1984 together, and our son Joseph came with us. Joseph was five years old when we came here.
It just is such an amazingly interesting job. He and I never dreaded a single day at work because we knew we were always going to learn something. People would come in doing research and telling us about their families and just, studying the whole history of the cemetery, the people who were buried here, historical figures of a long time ago and contemporary ones.
There was always something to learn and people to meet, and it was just an incredible job that Joe loved, I loved, and as I say, I never dreaded a single day. I looked forward to each day here. It was really fun. I guess fun is not the word, but the burial part of it, you do have to have a bit of, I guess they call it, detached professionalism.
You feel for the families and their loss and so many times after the burial, people come in and have coffee with us and they just talk. That’s a big part of the job, is just talking and…
Linda: Comfort?
Ella: Yes, yes. Having a cup of coffee or glass of tea or something. That part I really enjoyed, as did Joe. You just learn so much about families and the struggles they’ve had, the happiness they’ve had, and they will really open up to you about anything that you think, “Oh, I don’t know if I should know that but…”
The funniest thing is when people are doing research and you have the big plot books, you open them up. Each lot in the cemetery has a page in this big book that we keep. We open up the lot 200 and somebody’s doing research and they start down the line, writing down the people who are buried here, when they were buried and invariably someone would say, “How did she get buried here? Nobody ever liked her and she was the second wife.”
[laughter]
Ella: We say, “Well, you know, that was really before our time, that was in 1932 and so we don’t know.” Invariably, there are always amusing things that people say and, sometimes inadvertently you get a little chuckle out of it but…
Linda: I wonder did you know when you were coming here how great it was going to be and how historic it was but also, it seems like, tell me if this is wrong, that it’s kind of unique, in terms of, it’s clearly a unique cemetery, but it’s unique in that it’s really part of the community. You and Joe were so much part of Georgetown…
Ella: Thank you.
Linda: That seems like that’s sort of unique too.
Ella: It is, because so many of the cemeteries where the superintendent lived had a gate-house or whatever. Oak Hill is probably one of the few remaining that still does [where the superintendent lives].
Many gatehouses have become offices or storage facilities or visitor centers and so I think that is one thing that really, being here all the time, there are obviously sometimes you feel like you’re always on the job. In another sense, so many times Joe and I would, after hours… any time there had been a burial, we would always visit that site that day, that night, after we closed up.
Joe was very pragmatic. First of all, he wanted to make sure there were no tools left behind when the family came to visit. But just as a matter of like, “OK, here’s a new person and a new family that has suffered this.”
I think if we had driven away and gone to our home in the Northwest or Bethesda or wherever, it wouldn’t be quite the same as just being here. I saw something new almost every time I walked out…saw a new stone, read an inscription that I had missed because there’d been a shrub blooming there in the summer and in the fall the leaves might have covered it.
There was always something new to see. Maybe I would walk behind a tombstone… “Oh. We did not know that that inscription was there.” It is a unique place in that sense, that we had no idea when we came here. In fact, I thought, “Well, maybe we’ll stay here a few years.” Joe had mainly been hired because the former superintendent, George Kackley, needed some grounds-keeping help. I just accidentally fell into it.
George Kackley was a very, very gracious man. When I started working here our son had not started to school. He let me bring Joseph with me every day to work.
Linda: Oh, so you all weren’t living here yet.
Ella: No. We did not live here until Mr. Kackley left. We came in April of 1984 and Mr. Kackley left the next year, April, 1985. No, we lived over on Whitehaven Parkway but Mr. Kackley very nicely let me bring Joseph with me from April until he started school in September.
George Kackley was an amazing historian. I learned a lot just listening to him because he loved research. I think he had taught or been associated with a school down in Alexandria and the history just came alive with him. He was very animated. He was just a really very smart man and I learned a lot of the history of Oak Hill from him. We didn’t move here until after George left.
I had, of course, no idea how this job would evolve in such a way that it really gets into your heart. I think that Dave and Darla Jackson, David now, you know is the superintendent, he’s finding that too. A part of it, there’s the job, you have to do the job.
But just the relationships you have with the people, the families, and so many groups are interested in Oak Hill. I’ve done so many tours, garden clubs, student groups, the DAR ladies, and everybody wants to know about Oak Hill because it is just a real treasure and a real jewel in the city.
Linda: It’s so beautiful.
Ella: It is, it is. It’s exquisite.
Linda: How about some of the contemporary folks who are here now.
Ella: We do have quite a few contemporary people. President Truman’s Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, is buried by the chapel. Also David and Evangeline Bruce. David Bruce was the ambassador to France, England and West Germany. Philip and Katharine Graham are also by the chapel.
Edward Douglass White was a Chief Justice of the United States. And of course Ben Bradlee who was… I guess he was the publisher or editor of the Washington Post. He is now buried here.
Linda: He’s prominently buried here.
Ella: He is, yes, he has a mausoleum on the ellipse, which has been here for about a year now, it will be a year in September or October. Those are the ones who have the most name recognition of contemporary people. Let me think if there are any…Glenn Brenner is buried here.
Linda: Oh yes, oh yes.
Ella: He was a sportscaster on channel 9 for years and years.
Linda: It was so sudden.
Ella: I know and that was a very, very, very big funeral. Many people came to visit his grave. A lot of little old ladies and I’m a little old lady myself now. [laughs] They would come. Everybody listened to his predictions. I guess it was a nun who helped him with the predictions for the football games. I think she was from Georgetown. Sister Mary something…
[crosstalk]
Ella: Yes, I think she was a Visitation nun. Yes. I’m not sure but there was a nun who collaborated with him.
Linda: He was beloved.
Ella: He was very beloved. He really was. Kay Halle, is buried here. She lived down the street and she was in England during the war. She was from Ohio, and I think her family owned a big department store maybe in Cleveland.
She was in London during the war and was part of that whole OSS group. Julia Child was one of them. She and her husband were in the OSS. Kay was quite a colorful character herself so she was interesting to talk to because she had known Winston Churchill and the Churchill family. It was really quite amazing to listen to people of that era.
When Joe had his landscaping business, he worked for Mrs. John Sherman Cooper. John Sherman Cooper was a senator from Kentucky, I believe. She was quite a colorful character too. She had a big party for the Senate every spring and Joe would go and get her garden ready and she would come out in her little caftan and turban, and talk to Joe and tell all that there was to know about the Senate.
[laughter]
Ella: It was always interesting. Joe was hard of hearing, which many people knew and in the early days, really before he got his wonderful, wonderful hearing aids, towards the end of his life. She knew he was hard of hearing and one day he was working in her garden and, you know this is really kind of irrelevant because they’re not buried here but anyway, she said, “Joe, I have a solution for your deafness,” she said, “Come with me.” She had on one of her caftans and he said she said, “Sit down, here on the grass, cross leged and put your thumb in your mouth and blow real hard and that will clean out your ears.”
[laughter]
Ella: Anyway, as I say, an irrelevant story, but this is Georgetown.
Cathy: Did it help?
Ella: No, unfortunately, it did not help. I don’t know if he ever had the heart to tell her or not.
[laughter]
Linda: But that was sweet of her.
Ella: It was very sweet. Yes, yes. Those ladies were lovely ladies and so it was, yes, it was never dull here. Sometimes people say, “Oh a cemetery, man that must have been really depressing and really boring,” and there is nothing boring or depressing about Oak Hill.
Never will be I don’t think. There just is a certain sadness with the families. You feel their loss especially for people who lose children. No matter how a parent is helped. We’ve had 80-year-olds who’ve lost their 40-year-olds and it is extremely sad and it’s just a devastating event for them.
Cathy: I was doing a little research this morning on Oak Hill and I came across a note that President Lincoln would come to the mausoleum where his son was interred. There was a rocking chair in there and he would literally take him out of the casket and hold his body. Is there any truth to that?
[laughter]
Linda: That was David Rothman who said that.
Ella: Yes, there is always a lot of lore concerning a cemetery. There could have been a rocking chair in the place where Willie was buried. Actually it’s interesting because we have a drawing of the entire Carroll Mausoleum, and it doesn’t have Willie Lincoln listed anywhere. We don’t know what niche he was in.
But it could be that he could slide out the casket and I think I have heard this, and again I’m not sure, we have to check our facts on this. I don’t know if part of the casket was glass on top…
Cathy: That’s what I’ve read.
Ella: …that he could see, but as far as taking him out of the casket, I really don’t believe that would be true. But he could visit and I guess if you’re the President of the United States, you just come when you want to.
Interestingly enough, Jefferson Davis had a son buried here too.
Cathy: Really?
Ella: He did. He was removed to Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, VA, May 29, 1873. Joe and I used to say, “Wouldn’t it have been interesting if Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln visited at the same time.” They both had lost children. That, of course, we don’t know. I’m working on a project with Joe Krakora who has just retired from the National Gallery of Art. He and I are working on a documentary about Oak Hill. Part of this documentary is a fictional encounter between Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. Joe Krakora is an amazing, amazing person. He is so smart and he is a wonderful writer. He did a documentary on the founder of the National Gallery. What’s his name?
Cathy: Oh, Andrew Mellon?
Ella: Thank you. Yes. Andrew Mellon. I have a copy of it at home. It’s a CD on Paul Mellon and Joe narrates it and did all the research.
Anyway, we’re working on this documentary, which Joe says he’s going to try to get on PBS. It’ll be about an hour. But a part of this, is, what if they had met? What might they have said and how might this, things are different when it’s one on one.
Cathy: The purpose of their visit.
Ella: Yes, the purpose of the visit. It’s a very interesting dialogue…
Linda: How it may have changed things.
Ella: Hopefully, it will get aired. Actually Joe and I are having breakfast on Tuesday and we’re going to talk about it and everything. But it’s in the works. A lot of the focus is on the children buried at Oak Hill, which there are, I think, about 3,000.
Linda: Is that right?
Ella: It’s a very high number. Yes, a very high number.
Cathy: A lot of children died in those days.
Ella: Yes, and looking at the burials, a lot of our lots now have the burial orders that indicate that children would die of measles, but probably high fever or something. Children would die of mumps.
Cathy: How many people are interred here?
Ella: About 19,600, including cremations. That’s everything. One of the families that I directed Joe Krakora to is the White family over by the Van Ness Mausoleum. They lost five children in one month.
Cathy: Oh my gosh…
Ella: In December of 1878. At the very bottom of the tombstone it says, “Thy will be done.” Now, how anybody can do that, I don’t know.
Linda: Really, really.
Ella: Five children in one month.
Linda: What was…?
Ella: Scarlet fever.
Linda: Scarlet fever.
Ella: You look around and you see a lot of little lambs. The cemetery statuary is interesting too. You see little lambs. That’s usually where a child is buried. You see an upside down torch. That usually means someone died before their time. A lot of urns that are draped. They looks like have a cloth draped over. That’s a sign of mourning. Lilies are symbolic of eternal life. There is lots of symbolism in these cemeteries.
Oak Hill is part of what is called the Garden Cemetery Movement, which started around 1836. I guess the queen of the Garden Cemetery Movement cemeteries is Mount Auburn, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Amazing cemetery.
The board just went there about a month ago to visit. Then, there’s Laurel Hill in Philadelphia. Of course, Oak Hill is one. There are not many left that are…They’re still part of the garden cemetery movement, but maybe not quite on the scale or the grandeur of Mount Auburn and Laurel Hill and Oak Hill.
They were designed to be almost like a park, a place for people to go, take picnic baskets on Sundays, and commune with their deceased relatives or whatever. It was a place of beauty. I think that Romantic poets always linked death and beauty together in their poems. Yes, there is death but there’s a certain beauty.
The Garden Cemetery Movement cemeteries definitely try to do that. You see a lot of serpentine paths and lovely bushes and shrubs. Things that are peaceful, I guess, is the word.
Anyway, Oak Hill definitely has that, and that has been what the board and the superintendents through years have tried to maintain. The planting, the landscape of the cemetery remains romantic for lack of a better word.
Linda: They have. It’s just beautiful.
Ella: Yes. A lot of the trees here are probably some of the oldest in the city because during the Civil War a lot of trees were cut for the forts.
Linda: Really?
Ella: Yes, our trees couldn’t cut because it was a private property. We have some really old trees.
Cathy: I have been here for a wedding in that little chapel. Does that happen on a regular basis?
Ella: It does. Yes, we do have weddings here on occasion. Obviously, it’s a small wedding. The chapel sits about 50 people. Joe and I had several weddings while we were here, and David Jackson has done quite a few weddings.
It’s a lovely setting and sometimes people just want a little place, intimate and historic. It does lend itself to small weddings, and we’ve done quite a few of those. Who was the wedding with?
Cathy: I can’t remember it. It was about 40 years ago.
[laughter]
Ella: OK.
Cathy: They lived in one of the red brick houses across the street.
Ella: I know one we did was for the gentleman who owns the Old Town Trolley that goes by. He and his wife got married here, and every time one of the trolleys went by, “clang, clang, clang!”
[laughter]
Ella: That was fun. That was a happy day for them.
Cathy: Let’s see, I guess, life in the Georgetown….
Ella: I beg your pardon?
Cathy: Address yours and Joe’s life as really being part of the larger community, not just as it related to the cemetery.
Ella: One thing we did, we joined the Georgetown Citizens Association when we started living here, and Joe became a member of the business association. That is how you become a part of a community. You build relationships. We were always talking about Oak Hill, and trying to get people interested in it. As the years went by more and more people became very attuned to problems of Oak Hill. When you have a 19th century cemetery in the 21st century, there are issues and there are things to be dealt with.
We found that the community was so welcoming and I know, even living down North Carolina, I said, “Woo, Georgetown.” It was probably very snooty, but no.
The people were so welcoming, and wanted to really make a difference in the community itself. I know one time Joe and I were walking down…It was in the summertime, and we were walking down to have dinner somewhere. Joe was always attuned to landscaping and he said, “Just look at these weeds! Just look at these weeds in these tree boxes along the way.”
I said, “Joe, you know, people are away in the summertime.” “No, they need to make sure that their gardener takes the weeds out of them. The tree boxes. Look at those weeds.” Now you may see so many well tended little tree boxes right by the curb.
Linda: He became the chair of the beautification.
Ella: Yes, he did.
Linda: That’s when he…He handled that one!
[laughter]
[crosstalk]
Ella: He was looking for beautification. He joined the Friends of Montrose Park and helped clean up that. I don’t know if he was as involved when they did the area behind Dumbarton Oaks. That area was OK, and he might have helped a bit.
Cathy: That was Bill Corcoran.
Ella: OK, yes. I think it is an amazing community, and I’m so glad the Citizen’s Association is doing this project to further enhance the appreciation of what is here, what has been here, what we hope will remain here. That is extremely important, and the business association that Joe was involved in, too, again, and the university. There have always been town-gown issues.
I think there’s really a real enthusiasm, and people just work hard to make Georgetown a really viable place, a place that is not just…It’s lovely in itself, and the history, but a place that people can enjoy with their families now. When Joe and I moved here, I think my son Joseph had one little friend who lived down on O Street and that was it. Now there are little buggies parked out of every household.
Linda: I know, isn’t that sweet.
Ella: Yesterday, I was walking down to Staples, and I saw a double carrier being pushed by the nannies. There’s vibrancy now, and with young families coming in, I hope that the Citizens Association is going full speed ahead.
Linda: Yeah, stronger than ever.
Ella: OK, and the business association?
Linda: Business association, I don’t think is as strong as it used to be mainly because of the BID. The BID is the Business Improvement District. It does so much. I think the business association and, this has been for a while, is kind of struggling with who they are.
Ella: Identity.
Linda: Their identity.
Ella: OK.
Linda: But they are still going strong, Sonya Bernhardt, the publisher of The Georgetowner, is the chair now, so they seem to be doing…They are holding on. But I remember…
Cathy: They’ve also have improved the schools so much.
Ella: Yes.
Linda: Hugely.
Ella: Yes.
Cathy: That’s going to encourage younger people with children to live here.
Ella: Oh indeed, indeed. That’s good because I know the Anthony Hyde School. Dr. Rackley, my friend from Christ Church, his granddaughter I think goes there. He was telling me one day, her mother came to get her, and she was so upset because they had to interrupt her chess game after school.
[laughter]
Ella: That’s good, and just improvements everywhere. Coming back here, I’m here for two weeks now.
Linda: How does that feel?
Ella: Oh, it’s wonderful. I love coming back here and finding out what’s going on in Oak Hill, in the community. I come back three or four times a year. Sometimes to do some work for David and help out with a couple of projects he has. It is a wonderful privilege to come back to Oak Hill and to find out what’s going on and all of the improvements that are being made. Oak Hill has a wonderful board. George Hill, David de Vicq, Marisa Bourgoin and Loretta Castaldi
Linda: Gosh, George Hill has been on it forever!
Ella: Yes.
[pause]
Ella: Loretta Castaldi and Marisa Bourgoin. With the board and David Jackson, things are just going so well. George Hill is an amazing president of the board. Very attuned with what it’s going to take to keep Oak Hill viable and part of the community. It’s all good.
Linda: Why “Oak Hill.” Are there lots of oak trees?
Ella: You know what? Probably so, and I have no idea.
Cathy: Maybe Mr. Corcoran?
Ella: Maybe Mr. Corcoran thought that would be a great name.
Linda: It’s a beautiful name actually. It’s lovely.
Ella: It is. It’s apply named. I assure you of that because our oak trees are quite magnificent. The topography of the cemetery… part of it is natural and part of it are man-made terraces. I guess George de la Roche who was a civil engineer created these terraces. Which actually was very smart because water picks up speed going downhill, and so terraces would slow the water.
Cathy: You need flat surfaces to bury people.
Ella: That’s right. There is no use of backhoes. All the grave work is done by hand.
Cathy: Is it really?
Ella: Yes. The men dig.
Cathy: …To this day?
Ella: Yes. As we speak.
Linda: Why is that?
Ella: There’s no place to put a backhoe. The backhoe person would be tumbling down the hill. Our men dig all the graves by hand with pick and shovel.
Linda: …By necessity?
Ella: Yes. By necessity, mainly.
Cathy: Do they bury in the winter?
Ella: Sometimes, obviously. This past winter I don’t think they did any burials.
Linda: What do you do when you don’t…?
Ella: Back in the day, there are four crypts in the chapel…under the floor in the chapel. When bodies could not be buried, they would move the pews and put them in these vaults. Nowadays, I think the funeral home keeps the bodies at the home. Unless it’s just bitter, bitter cold for a long, long time, the ground is only frozen down maybe 8 to 10 inches. That initial break, and then they…
Cathy: They can do it?
Ella: Joe, when he first came here, he and the guys dug u