HIDDEN HANOVER A Place for the Living Mt. Olivet Cemetery’s Deep Roots Grow Community By Marc Charisse, Ph.D. Mt. Olivet Cemetery was founded at the height of the rural cemetery movement, which looked to the ancient Greek practice of burying the dead outside the crowded confines of their community. (left) Cemetery board vice president Olivia Rebert-Blake’s favorite spot at Mt. Olivet is the mausoleum. There are 140 burial spaces—no number 13—and even a few still available. (right) The Pet Memorial Garden was created when Marian Wolf purchased land and donated it back to the cemetery for the community to bury pets. Her own beloved pets are buried here as well. Death was a part of everyday life when Mt. Olivet Cemetery was founded in 1859. And those in charge of Hanover’s nondenominational cemetery today would like to see it again become a center of community, bringing together the past and the present, the living and dead, to celebrate life’s eternal lessons. “Feel free to come visit, even if you don’t have people here,” says cemetery board vice president Olivia Rebert-Blake. “It’s 60 acres of peace and quiet.” In the years before the Civil War, many towns were running out of space in churchyards. Across the country, rural cemeteries were built in a Transcendentalist-inspired return to nature. There were, of course, hygienic reasons to remove the dead from crowded towns. But the philosophical reasons were even more important, historian Garry Wills insists. “The new cemetery would be a place of frequent resort for the living, who would commune with nature as a way of finding life in death,” Wills writes. “The associations of a rural site would instill healing truths, of natural death and rebirth, in the cycle of the seasons.” In that spirit, a new Hanover cemetery was founded on land donated by the McAllister and Rudisill families south of town, but still within walking distance. The living could visit loved ones in a natural setting ideal for family gatherings and even Sunday picnics. A volunteer board was appointed to administer the cemetery, and many, including Hanover’s founder, Richard McAllister, were reburied there. Named for the Mount of Olives—where Jesus is expected to return at the Resurrection— the cemetery offers inspiring views of church steeples in the town below rising to the thick forests of the hills beyond. Hanover-area native Rebert-Blake joined the board nearly three years ago with the goal to return this place 8 celebratehanover.com
Celebrate Hanover Fall/Winter 2025: Page 8
