Greenwood Cemetery

Established in the 1880s, Greenwood Cemetery is the final resting place of over 40,000 Central Florida residents. For its first four decades, the cemetery was known as Orlando Cemetery, with the name change reflecting both the vast green landscape and the name of the prominent street at the cemetery's entrance. The cemetery includes the graves of many prominent citizens whose stories have shaped the history of Orlando.

Orlando’s history dates back to 1838 and the height of the Seminole Wars. The U.S. Army built Fort Gatlin south of the present-day Orlando City limits to protect settlers from attacks by Native Americans. By 1840, a small community had grown up around the fort. It was known as Jernigan, named after the Jernigan family, who had established the first permanent settlement in the area. During that time, people buried their loved ones on their own properties or in small burial yards, usually on the same day that they died.¹ This led to issues as the city began to expand in 1857; valuable real estate was found to be overrun with burials, and the lack of cohesive record-keeping meant many graves were lost. Mahlon Gore, publisher of The Orange County Reporter, mounted a campaign to convince the public of the need for a communal cemetery.²

In 1882, a group of eight Orlando pioneers formed the Orlando Cemetery Company and purchased forty acres of land at the southeast corner of what is now the eighty-six-acre Greenwood Cemetery from John W. Anderson and his wife, Emily, for $1,800.³ The names of these eight men might sound familiar, as many of Orlando’s streets have been named for them: Cassius A. Boone, I. P. Wescott, James K. Duke, J. H. Livingston, Nathaniel Poyntz, William R. Anno, James Delaney, and Samuel A. Robinson.⁴ Robinson platted and designed the original cemetery.⁵ 

Orlando’s original undertaker, Edgar A. Richards, and his protege, Elijah Hand, opened the first funerary and furniture business in 1884.⁶ Hand brought with him the practice of embalming, which allowed for burials several days after death, transforming the rituals surrounding memorials for residents. Hand’s funeral parlor served the city for many years and was continued by his son, Carey Hand, who built Orlando’s first crematorium in 1918.⁷ 

Many of the early grave markers in Greenwood Cemetery were wooden, as many residents could not afford markers of stone until the combination of the railroad and mass-marketed catalog companies, like Sears Roebuck, made headstones attainable for the average Orlando resident.⁸ Wooden headboards presented many problems, the least of which was eventual decay. A fire in 1891 decimated the cemetery. Following the fire, the City of Orlando purchased the Orlando Cemetery Company for $3,000, along with an additional fourteen acres to expand the cemetery in 1892.⁹ The city ordered the disinterment and reburial of as many of the previous graves around the city as possible at the turn of the twentieth century to enable Orlando’s growth by freeing up the land once taken up by these early burials and to provide a “proper and permanent place for burials.”¹⁰

The cemetery was originally known as the Orlando Cemetery until 1915 when two of the founding members of the cemetery, Samuel Robinson and Cassius Boone, requested that the name be changed to Greenwood Cemetery to better link the cemetery to its landscape and beautiful surroundings.¹¹ The original forty acres of the Cemetery consisted of the southeastern quadrant of the present-day cemetery from Greenwood Street to the north, Hampton Avenue to the east, and Gore Street to the south. Additional acres were acquired as the city grew, first encompassing the southern half of the cemetery and eventually expanding for the final time in 1935 with the acquisition of thirty acres north of Greenwood Street to Newman Street. The city took possession of the final plot of land from Mr. Chesley Magruder, who owned this portion of the property in the Jonestown neighborhood, in place of back taxes owed to the city.¹² 

Visitors can explore this quiet, scenic locale daily during operating hours. After almost a century and a half in operation, Greenwood Cemetery has transformed from a simple communal burial site to a space where local memory is enshrined, and the history of the City of Orlando finds eternal rest. 

1. Joy Wallace Dickenson, Orlando: City of Dreams (Great Britain: Arcadia Publishing, 2003), 25, 36.

2. “History of Greenwood Cemetery Told by Hon. Samuel A. Robinson – Pioneer,” Orlando Reporter-Star, September 14, 1915, 8.

3. Orange County, Florida, Deed Book Z: 625 (John and Emily Anderson to L. P. Wescott, 17 Oct 1882), accessed May 4, 2024, https://selfservice.or.occompt.com/ssweb/document/DOCC4433227?search=DOCSEARCH2950S1 

4. “Greenwood Cemetery,” Orlando Reporter-Star, 8.

5. “Greenwood Cemetery,” Orlando Reporter-Star, 8.

6. James C. Clark, Orlando Florida: A Brief History (Charleston: The History Press, 2013), 34.

7. Dickenson, Orlando, 36.

8. Sears Roebuck & Co., Tombstones and Monuments (Chicago: Sears, Roebuck & Co., 1906), 3.

9. Eve Bacon, Orlando: A Centennial History (Chuluota: Mickler House Publishers, 1975), I: 188.

10. “Greenwood Cemetery,” Orlando Reporter-Star, 8.

11. Letter to the City Council, Samuel Robinson and Cassius Boone, June 9, 1915.; “Want Cemetery to Have Name ‘Greenwood’”, Orlando Morning Sentinel, June 9, 1915, 1.  

12. “Orlando Takes Grave Plots for Old Taxes: Magruder Property Near Greenwood Brings $21,000,” Orlando Sentinel, June 27, 1935, 1-2.