Cypress Grove Cemetery
Site Brief:
Founded: 1840s
Location: Monticello, AR
Additional name(s): Hollywood Plantation, Valley Farm, Taylor Cemetery
Affiliate group(s):
Arkansas Archeology Survey
History:
The Cypress Grove Cemetery is located on what was once the Hollywood Plantation, established during the 1840s by Dr. Jonathan Martin Taylor. At its peak, the plantation covered over 10,000 acres with 83 enslaved Black laborers. According to oral history, after Abraham Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, Taylor ordered that the slaves working on the Hollywood Plantation be freed. Some stayed on as hired servants to the remaining Taylor descendants, some traveled north with the help of Taylor and his resources, and others made homes elsewhere in southeastern Arkansas.
The Cypress Grove Cemetery was used for at least two decades into the twentieth century and shows evidence that local Black families belonged to fraternal organizations during that time. Two of the gravestones state that those buried beneath them were members of the Lily of the Valley Chapter 1007 of the Mosaic Templars of Winchester. Another gravestone states that its owner was a member of the Sweet Home Chamber 2620. Membership in such fraternal organizations offered insurance for grave markers and burial plots—which African Americans had no control over during slavery. This Black cemetery is one of many in southeastern Arkansas, which still has a large Black population today.
