In 1864, Alexandria established the Contrabands and Freedmen’s Cemetery as a burial ground for formerly enslaved individuals and African American refugees who died seeking freedom behind Union lines. Located at the city’s southern edge, it became the final resting place for over 1,700 men, women, and children, most buried without gravestones.
The land was originally owned by Francis Lee Smith Sr., a prominent attorney for the Lee family and resident of Alexandria’s largest private home at 510 Wolfe Street. After the Union army occupied the city in 1861, Smith fled to Richmond. In his absence, Union authorities confiscated his property at Broomallaw Point along Great Hunting Creek—land that would become the site of this cemetery. The first burial took place on March 7, 1864, for five-year-old Morris Grimes.
Though Smith would later return to Alexandria, his land was never restored to him. Today, the site, long neglected but now memorialized, honors the memory of those interred and is listed on both the National Register of Historic Places and the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.
