The Frankfort Cemetery is located on East Main Street in Frankfort, Kentucky. The cemetery is the supposed burial site of Daniel Boone and contains the graves of other famous Americans including seventeen Kentucky governors and a Vice President of the United States.
It was created by Judge Mason Brown, son of statesman John Brown, inspired by a visit to Mount Auburn Cemetery in Boston.
Brown enlisted other Frankfort civic leaders and on February 27, 1844 the Kentucky General Assembly approved the cemetery's incorporation. The 32-acre property, then called Hunter's Garden, was purchased in 1845 for $3,801. Additional land was purchased in 1858 and in 1911 for a total of 100 acres.
Brown hired Scottish-born landscape architect Robert Carmichael to design the cemetery.
The cemetery is designed in a style similar to Mount Auburn, with curving lanes, terraces and a circle of vaults. Carmichael imported flowers from around the state, intending the cemetery to double as an arboretum in a time when residents could not easily travel to see mountain flowers not native to the region. A central feature is the State Mound, featuring a Kentucky War Memorial designed by Robert E. Launitz.
The cemetery has views of the Kentucky River, which forms its western boundary. A bluff overlooking the river gives a view of downtown, south Frankfort, and the Capitol District.
Notable Interments[]
- John Adair
- A. J. Alexander
- Robert A. Alexander
- Bland Ballard
- William T. Barry
- J. C. W. Beckham
- George Mortimer Bibb
- Joseph Clay Stiles Blackburn
- Luke P. Blackburn
- James Neville Blakemore
- Albert B. Blanton
- Daniel Boone
- Rebecca Ann Boone
- William O'Connell Bradley
- Henry Brown
- John Brown
- Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr.
- Simon Bolivar Buckner, Sr.
- John Caldwell
- Johnson Newlon Camden, Jr.
- Ann Layman Chancellor
- Beverly Leonidas Clarke
- Henry Clay, Jr.
- Henry Crist
- George B. Crittenden
- John J. Crittenden
- Thomas Leonidas Crittenden
- Emma Guy Cromwell
- Dick Crutcher
- John Milton Elliott
- Thomas Young Fitzpatrick
- Cary Harrison Fry
- William Goebel
- Christopher Greenup
- Martin Davis Hardin
- James Harlan
- Joel Tanner Hart
- Miss Elizabeth
- Willard Rouse Jillson
- Richard Mentor Johnson
- Jerry Lee
- Robert P. Letcher
- William Lindsay
- George Madison
- Humphrey Marshall
- Thomas Francis Marshall
- John Calvin Mason
- Silas B. Mason
- Samuel McKee
- William Robertson McKee
- George Wood Monroe
- Charles S. Morehead
- James Turner Morehead
- Edwin P. Morrow
- James W. Moss
- Presley Neville O'Bannon
- Theodore O'Hara
- Lucy Pattie
- Thomas Hanson Paynter
- William Thompson Price
- Sy Ramsey
- Paul Sawyier
- Charles Scott
- Solomon P. Sharp
- Augustus Owsley Stanley
- Henry Thompson Stanton
- Isham Talbot
- Edmund Haynes Taylor, Jr.
- Thomas Hart Taylor
- Maurice Hudson Thatcher
- Ed Porter Thompson
- Thomas Todd
- South Trimble
- Lawrence Winchester Wetherby
- John White
- Simeon Willis
- Robert Burns Wilson