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LINCOLN MEMORIAL CEMETERY, Suitland, Md.

"Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow."
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865).

The quiet, calm seclusion of Lincoln Memorial Cemtery has appealed to thousands whose loved ones lie there, and eases the sorrow of their loss by assurance that these loved one shall be at rest peacefully and be cared for pepetually by loving sympathetic hands.

HOW IT CAME TO BE!

Here within close range of the Eastern end of historic Pennsylvania Avenue, under the shadow of the Dome of the Capitol at Washington, is realized a great social service, flowing from a love and affection due a childhold and youth spent by the founder surrounded by plain, christian colored people at his ancestral home near Lynchburg, Virginia. As a young practicing attorney, following his graduation from University of Virginia, the founder's first clerk was a young colored man with whom he had been a companion in earlier life, a namesake.

The founder, J. E. Edmonds, having visited Europe many times and been guided to the cemeteries in all foreign capitals, as show places, had no thought of creating one, until the day he visited the most beautiful resting place of the Kings of France, when, as voices from Heaven were vouchsafed to men of ancient days, he said told, "to go to America's capital and make a cemetery worthy of the progress made by the colored people since Emancipation."

Like all high purposes, this inspired message found its realization overcoming all obstacles and opposition, (and they were many and strong) by a Hand beyond that of man, as well as needed human aid and cooperation almost as mysteriously provided.

First the site, at the Eastern door to the Nation's Capital where more than thirty earlier "burying grounds" had disappeared; next its chartering "in perpetuity" by the State of Maryland, the "Old Free State" of Revolution days made famous by Benjamin Banneker and Frederick Douglass; then its size, 165 acres which was 65 more than allowed by state law, buying it against the expressed denial of the owner, but the approval of his heir; next getting a road by the increased traffic because of population expansion; then realizing the money to go forward by a voluntary offer for the 65 acres and finding another source of water to replace that on the section sold, then enlisting sympathy and direction of the leading landscape architect, Mr. John H. Small, who engineered it at costs of labor and materials.

It was at this point that C. Tiffany Toliver, able and kindly tempered, a widely known fraternal man, was secured as superintendent, and well known clergymen, Revs. William H. Jernagin and William D. Jarvis, respected for their fidelity to the best interest of their people, gave it their approval, while support and guidance were added by prominent civic, business and religious leaders from the most cultured group of colored citizens anywhere ั in the late Dr. John R. Hawkins, Mrs. Mary Church Terrell, Jesse H. Mitchell, Rev. C. T. Murray, and Prof. Charles M. Thomas. The morticians as well as the patrons generally gave it their endorsement and support.

It does seem that its undertaking and guidance have been by Providence.

That LINCOLN MEMORIAL CEMETERY should be its incorporated name, climaxes the institution because of that Great Martyr whose perpetual monument graces the Potomac shores, with a bronze bust imposed upon a pedestal overlooking the elipse at the entrance of this beautiful last resting place of those who prove their wise use of American freedom by the high striving of their lives and the honor to the dead.

Lincoln Memorial Cemetery is a beautiful park always well-kept, completely supervised, directed in peace, harmony, love and interracial relations indicting a New Age,ัand inexpensive.

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