Elmwood and Pinewood Cemetery: a walking history

On the west edge of Uptown, between Sixth Street and the Music Factory, is the most honest history book in Charlotte: 72 acres of stones, opened in 1853, that record who the city was, who it counted and who it didn’t. This guide is a walk through Elmwood, Pinewood and the Settlers’ Cemetery next door, with the history at each stop. Every fact links to the city, the Historic Landmarks Commission or the friends group that keeps the place; the businesses around it link to the directory.

Why it exists

Charlotte outgrew its dead. The gold find of 1799 and the railroad in 1852 turned the town into a regional trading center, and Settlers’ Cemetery on West Fifth Street, the only municipal burial ground, was filling. In 1853 the city bought the first of the tracts that would become Elmwood; the first burial was in 1855 and Settlers’ closed in 1867 (My City Magazine, Historic Landmarks Commission survey). The city laid it out rural-style, with plots in spacious patterns following the land, in the fashion of the era (City of Charlotte). The complex is 72 acres by one count and about 75 by another, running from Sixth past Ninth Street to the edge of the AvidXchange Music Factory (Charlotte On The Cheap, Friends of Fourth Ward). More than 45,000 people are buried there.

Three cemeteries, one fence

From the start it was three burial grounds. Elmwood sold plots only to white citizens; Pinewood, laid out as a completely separate ground with its own Ninth Street entrance, sold only to paying African Americans; and Potter’s Field, inside Elmwood’s edge, buried white citizens who couldn’t pay (Historic Landmarks Commission). A chain-link fence separated Pinewood, with no gate and, at one point, a No Trespassing sign facing the Pinewood side (Charlotte On The Cheap). In 1968 Fred Alexander, the city’s first Black council member since the nineteenth century, fought to remove it; in January 1969 a 3-3 council vote was broken by Mayor Stan Brookshire and the fence came down the next day (City of Charlotte, Charlotte On The Cheap). Our read: stand at the line where the fence was, which you’ll only find if you know to look, and the whole city’s twentieth century is under your feet.

Walking Elmwood

Enter from Sixth Street, at 700 West Sixth, the main entrance (Historic Landmarks Commission). The monuments are the story: obelisks and angels for the merchants and bankers, the Masonic compass and square on the lodge brothers’ stones, a stone for the World War I soldiers of Camp Greene, the training camp that briefly made Charlotte a military town (Historic Landmarks Commission). The Friends of Fourth Ward count a governor, several generals, a circus animal trainer, firemen, an actor and veterans of every war from the Revolution to the Gulf among the graves (Friends of Fourth Ward). Walk the driveways in the 1906 pattern the city engineer drew; the sections are numbered and the map is on the friends group’s site.

Walking Pinewood

Pinewood is different on purpose. Where Elmwood is designed and decorated, Pinewood is simpler and more organic, the plots laid out irregularly, many graves unmarked because families couldn’t afford stone (My City Magazine). The people buried here built Black Charlotte: the teachers and preachers of Biddleville, the business owners of Brooklyn, the congregations of the historic churches. Fewer big monuments, more history per square foot. The Ninth Street entrance is still open (Friends of Fourth Ward).

Settlers’ Cemetery

A few blocks east, behind First Presbyterian on West Fifth, is where Charlotte buried its founders. It was the town’s only cemetery until Elmwood, closed in 1867, restored in the late 1990s, with vandalized headstones still in storage (Historic Elmwood Pinewood). Charlotte On The Cheap’s photo guide covers both and links the Find A Grave records (Charlotte On The Cheap).

The friends, and the damage

Historic Elmwood Pinewood, Inc. is the nonprofit that maintains, tours and raises money for the cemeteries, and it needs help: Hurricane Helene in 2024 damaged the box tomb of Patrick Harty, one of the county’s earliest craftsmen, and the restoration is a current appeal (Historic Elmwood Pinewood). The city designated the complex a local landmark in 2003. The friends group runs a living-history day each spring and takes volunteers; it isn’t in the directory yet, and the volunteer guide is where it belongs.

Around the cemetery

The neighborhoods on either side are in the directory: Fourth Ward to the east, Wesley Heights and Seversville to the west, the Music Factory’s bars to the north. The Charlotte Museum of History and the Kannapolis African-American Museum carry the two halves of the story indoors. And the funeral homes in the directory, Hartsell, Gordon, Greene and Wilkinson among them, are the trade that has kept the records the historians use.

How to walk it

Go in the morning on a weekday; it’s a working cemetery and funerals happen. Enter at Sixth, walk north through Elmwood, cross the old fence line into Pinewood, exit at Ninth. Ninety minutes. Bring the friends group’s map, water, and respect: stay on the paths, don’t rub the stones, and don’t photograph a funeral. Then walk east to Settlers’ and back to the Square, and you’ve covered 250 years in a morning. Know a story buried here? Tell us; the friends group would like it too.