Today I took a field trip over to Greenwood Cemetery West and took pictures. My original goal was to go back to Mt. Ararat, but they had that side locked. Greenwood was right next door so I went there.
Greenwood Cemetery (& the West division of it ) is the final resting place for a number of Nashville’s black citizens. The cemetery is pretty large and will take me some time to get through, but I took close to 150 pictures today. I will be adding them over time to the FindAGrave listings so that they may hopefully be of use to others.
As I was leaving the cemetery, I did see this mausoleum and had to go and see it. While I recognized the McKissack name, it didn’t come to me immediately who they were. The oldest black-owned architectural firm in the US is McKissack & McKissack, founded in 1905 is still in operation today. The firm was founded by Moses McKissack III and many family members were involved. For more information about the history of the firm, there is information online in the Profiles of African Americans in Tennessee book and the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History & Culture.
In the mausoleum are buried:
- Moses McKissack III (1879-1952)
- Moses McKissack IV (1916-1980)
- Calvin Lunsford McKissack (1890-1968)
- Geneva Windham McKissack (1901-1951)
- Miranda Winter McKissack (1887-1955)
I’ll be adding the McKissacks to my surnames to watch out for in my research. I have already started a family tree for them on my site.
Filed under: Greenwood, Greenwood West, McKissack
[...] – visited Greenwood Cemetery (West) and took more than 150 pictures of headstones and blogged about it; began adding information to FindAGrave; Researched the black McKissack family of [...]
Do you take requests? My wife is trying to find out her family history, but has run into a lot of roadblocks. Her family came from Nashville and is probably buried there. Some names include Robert J. Perkins and Lizzie Perkins. Not sure of their dates of death. There are a number of other Perkins who are related. Thank you. Rick