Eastern Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky

About

Get directions 641 Baxter Ave
Louisville, Kentucky 40204 United States

Coordinates: 38.24705, -85.72491
Cemetery ID:

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About these numbers These percentages indicate the number of Find a Grave memorials that have a grave photo or GPS coordinates. We don't know the total number of burials in a cemetery, so we cannot calculate a percentage of those with memorials, photos or GPS coordinates.

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693 open photo requests.

The Commonwealth of Kentucky appointed the Staff Archaeologist from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Louisville as the guardian of Eastern Cemetery when the overburial was discovered in 1989.

Dr. Thomas Jennings Center for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage University of Louisville Louisville, KY 40292 https://louisville.edu/anthropology/cache/services-offered "For information about any of these cemeteries and individuals buried within them, please send requests to the dedicated email address [email protected].

Opened in the 1840s by the Methodist Episcopal churches, it eventually came under the ownership of Louisville Crematories and Cemetery Corporation, which operated Louisville's first crematorium.
During the mid19th century, it was used for pauper burials and by last count there were 130,000 graves in an area that could only hold about 16,000. Scandal broke out in 1989 when bones were found scattered in the dirt. The Corportation was charged with reselling previously occupied graves and after investigation, it was found that possibly as many as 48000 graves were reused.
The cemetery essentially became abandoned, and it wasn't until 2017 when Friends of Eastern Cemetery was established, and it was cleaned up and maintained.