Mt. Hope Cemetery
Mount Hope Cemetery was founded in 1872 as a city owned African American cemetery. Mt. Hope is located on 34.5 acres at Fayetteville Street and Prospect Avenue, and is a pastoral landscaped cemetery with hills and views of downtown. The rich history of those buried there includes Clarence Lightner, the first Black mayor of Raleigh, the Reverend Henry Beard Delany, one of two Black Bishops of the Episcopal Church at the time of his death, and Colonel James H. Young, commander of a volunteer Black regiment during the Spanish-American War.
DATABASE
The records for Mount Hope Cemetery, like all city owned cemeteries, were apparently destroyed by fire sometime in the 1930s and with them a great deal of information about who was buried there and in what location.
In 2008, staff and volunteers at the Olivia Raney Local History Library reconstructed the list of interments at Mount Hope with painstaking research, using North Carolina death certificates and the Raleigh Death Register- compiling a list of more than 7,000 names. Volunteers, when information was available, provided complete names as well as both birth and death dates for each individual. Information is based on what informants provided for the death certificates to the best of their abilities, but there may be errors in spelling of names or birth and death dates. The database was compiled by Olivia Raney Local History Library volunteers under leadership of Karen-Marie Allen, former branch manager.
In 2025, RCCP board members updated the Mt. Hope database, adding those from 1,500 names included in our GIS map of the cemetery’s historic section, as well as editing and updating the list through online info from Find A Grave, and names from the thorough research of historian Alan Welsh. Military service was included for those who have military markers, although more information is needed. The new database consists of more than 12,800 names.
Links
Mount Hope Historic Section GIS Map
Mt. Hope Cemetery Map and Walking Tour
Mt. Hope Cemetery Database of Interred
Mt. Hope Cemetery National Register Nomination
