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Workers locate remains of Confederate general under Richmond monument

cigaretteman

HR King
May 29, 2001
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Workers found the remains of Confederate Gen. A.P. Hill on Tuesday under the base of a statue honoring him that was taken down from a city intersection the day before.
Machinery operators stood by as representatives of a Richmond-area funeral home prepared to extract the remains, which were then to be taken to Hill’s hometown of Culpeper. The city of Richmond paid $1,000 for a burial plot there near other Hill family members.


Richmond takes down its last major city-owned Confederate memorial
A descendant of Hill’s — who had fought unsuccessfully in court to take possession of the monument along with the remains — stood with the funeral home workers, saying he wanted to ensure the process was handled respectfully.

The Hill statue was the last major Confederate memorial on city-owned property in the former capital of the Confederacy. It outlasted more than a dozen others taken down since the social-justice protests of 2020 — its removal delayed because of its unique status as a tomb.






Removing the bronze statue of Hill from its base took less than an hour Monday morning. The figure was lifted by a crane, then strapped onto a flatbed truck and hauled to storage at a secure wastewater treatment plant.
Dismantling the stone base, though, took hours, with police sealing off the busy intersection of Hermitage Road and West Laburnum Avenue all day. Around 5 p.m., most of the plinth had been taken apart and its pieces labeled in case it is ever reassembled. Richmond has given custody of most of its Confederate monuments to the city’s Black History Museum, which will decide what to do with them.
Which Confederate statues are gone in the DMV — and which remain?
Historical records were unclear on where the Hill remains might be within the monument. The general was killed outside Petersburg in the waning days of the Civil War in 1865, and his body was buried and reburied in two locations before being moved to its current location in 1891.











The monument honoring Hill was devised as a way to lure residents to a new housing development in what was then rural Henrico County and later annexed by the city. Today the intersection is one of Richmond’s busiest — and most dangerous, as the need to avoid the giant gray monument in the center has caused frequent wrecks.
Though Hill was said to have asked to be buried standing up, by the time his remains got to the monument they consisted of little more than bones and tattered cloth, according to news reports of the day. Accounts described him being placed into a box in the base of the monument some six feet above the ground.
But the full monument was not dedicated until the following year, and historians and city officials were uncertain how the base was configured when Hill was interred. On Tuesday, workers stripped away layer after layer, pausing to look for signs of a crypt.
As it turned out, the remains were at the very bottom, partially underground, below earth that had been mounded around the old foundation.

 
Good. Move them all to some theme park in the South.
There were probably a few stray dogs around that would have appreciated a bone. Also, a waste (shit) water treatment plant seems like an appropriate permanent site for the statue.
 
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Workers found the remains of Confederate Gen. A.P. Hill on Tuesday under the base of a statue honoring him that was taken down from a city intersection the day before.
Machinery operators stood by as representatives of a Richmond-area funeral home prepared to extract the remains, which were then to be taken to Hill’s hometown of Culpeper. The city of Richmond paid $1,000 for a burial plot there near other Hill family members.


Richmond takes down its last major city-owned Confederate memorial
A descendant of Hill’s — who had fought unsuccessfully in court to take possession of the monument along with the remains — stood with the funeral home workers, saying he wanted to ensure the process was handled respectfully.

The Hill statue was the last major Confederate memorial on city-owned property in the former capital of the Confederacy. It outlasted more than a dozen others taken down since the social-justice protests of 2020 — its removal delayed because of its unique status as a tomb.






Removing the bronze statue of Hill from its base took less than an hour Monday morning. The figure was lifted by a crane, then strapped onto a flatbed truck and hauled to storage at a secure wastewater treatment plant.
Dismantling the stone base, though, took hours, with police sealing off the busy intersection of Hermitage Road and West Laburnum Avenue all day. Around 5 p.m., most of the plinth had been taken apart and its pieces labeled in case it is ever reassembled. Richmond has given custody of most of its Confederate monuments to the city’s Black History Museum, which will decide what to do with them.
Which Confederate statues are gone in the DMV — and which remain?
Historical records were unclear on where the Hill remains might be within the monument. The general was killed outside Petersburg in the waning days of the Civil War in 1865, and his body was buried and reburied in two locations before being moved to its current location in 1891.











The monument honoring Hill was devised as a way to lure residents to a new housing development in what was then rural Henrico County and later annexed by the city. Today the intersection is one of Richmond’s busiest — and most dangerous, as the need to avoid the giant gray monument in the center has caused frequent wrecks.
Though Hill was said to have asked to be buried standing up, by the time his remains got to the monument they consisted of little more than bones and tattered cloth, according to news reports of the day. Accounts described him being placed into a box in the base of the monument some six feet above the ground.
But the full monument was not dedicated until the following year, and historians and city officials were uncertain how the base was configured when Hill was interred. On Tuesday, workers stripped away layer after layer, pausing to look for signs of a crypt.
As it turned out, the remains were at the very bottom, partially underground, below earth that had been mounded around the old foundation.

Roger Stone is probably putting together a proposal to try and reanimate the remains and bring him back. "The South shall rise again!".
 
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