Established in a farming community near the village of Concord in Campbell County between 1752 and 1756, the Dixon Cemetery contains the graves of some of the earliest settlers in Virginia’s west-central piedmont, with the unusual distinction of including both African Americans, enslaved and freed, and White persons, some of whom were soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary and Civil wars; as well as many others who made historical contributions to Virginia and the nation. Initially a private family cemetery contained within a land grant of 1,025 acres to Thomas Dixon, an Irish immigrant, it became a public cemetery in 1878. The 1.1-acre wooded parcel that contains the Dixon Cemetery includes various separate family plots as well as random graves without associated family members buried nearby. Few of the family plots are enclosed or visibly demarcated. The African American plots are in the western corner of the cemetery, with both marked and unmarked graves. Those that are marked, however, have only undressed fieldstones with no inscriptions. The majority of grave markers throughout the cemetery are uninscribed, undressed fieldstones. Most of the inscribed headstones date from the 1890s to the 1920s. The last burials made in the Dixon Cemetery were in 1938.
Many properties listed in the registers are private dwellings and are not open to the public, however many are visible from the public right-of-way. Please be respectful of owner privacy.
Abbreviations:
VLR: Virginia Landmarks Register
NPS: National Park Service
NRHP: National Register of Historic Places
NHL: National Historic Landmark
Programs
DHR has secured permanent legal protection for over 700 historic places - including 15,000 acres of battlefield lands
DHR has erected 2,532 highway markers in every county and city across Virginia
DHR has registered more than 3,317 individual resources and 613 historic districts
DHR has engaged over 450 students in 3 highway marker contests
DHR has stimulated more than $4.2 billion dollars in private investments related to historic tax credit incentives, revitalizing communities of all sizes throughout Virginia