Location: US 301 Business (St. David Street) at King Street in Halifax
County: Halifax
Original Date Cast: 1953
The “Colonial Churchyard” of Halifax contains some of the earliest gravestones in that region of North Carolina. It surrounds a small chapel built in the mid to late eighteenth century by the Church of England. The building housed one of the four original churches in the Edgecombe Parish (present-day Halifax County). Around 1822, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church organized and used the old chapel. St. Mark’s soon after declined but was re-organized in 1855. The chapel stood until 1911.
The oldest gravestone in the cemetery is that of William Alexander, a merchant who died in October 1766. Others buried there are Sarah Davie, wife of William R. Davie, founder of the University of North Carolina; John Sitgreaves, an early U.S. district court judge; Abraham Hodge, the printer and editor of the North Carolina Journal; and Confederate General Junius Daniel. More recent gravestones belong to the Daniel, Marshal, and Gary families, who were strong supporters of the Episcopal Church during the nineteenth century.
References:
Stuart Hall Smith and Claiborne T. Smith Jr., The History of Trinity Paris and Edgecombe Parish (1955)
W. C. Allen, History of Halifax County (1918)
Letter from Claiborne T. Smith Jr. to Department of Archives and History, December 8, 1952, in marker files, Archives and History