Daughters of Zion Cemetery, Charlottesville

This is a virtual tour of the Daughters of Zion Cemetery in Charlottesville, an African American cemetery founded in 1873 by a society of African American women of that name. There are roughly 140 burial markers extant in the two-acre plot; however, unmarked depressions scattered throughout the cemetery indicate that many more were buried there. Among the prominent local citizens interred there is Benjamin Tonsler (1854–1917), an influential African American educator who was the principal at Jefferson Graded School for nearly thirty years.