Cave Hill Cemetery

The city fathers did not have a cemetery in mind when

they acquired part of the old farm that the Johnson family had called Cave Hill. The farm had a good spring emanating from a cave, but its stone quarries were of principal interest, particularly because the proposed Louisville and Frankfort Railroad was supposed to run through the property. As almost an afterthought, a few flat acres were to be surveyed off to balance the burying privileges at the west end of Jefferson Street.

Years went by and it became evident that the railroad would skirt the quarries. The fields were farmed by lessees and the old brick house built by the Johnstons became the City's Pest House-an isolated home for patients displaced and suffering from eruptive, contagious diseases. Death was an all-too-frequent visitor to the Pest House. But this Death was in a different guise. It had not the finality and disgust the earlier Puritan concept had associated with it. Death was not to be abhorred and feared. It was full of promise, hope, and rejuvenation; and the sorrow associated with it was accompanied by joy and revelation. Death was merely a transition, and as such, a natural setting for burials became desirable. Asleep in nature elicited a much different feeling than being confined and neglected in shabby plots and yards that many times themselves spread diseases and compounded the problem. Their only saving grace was as sources of cadavers for medical schools.

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