Descendants of Olivewood

Nestled against a bend of Buffalo Bayou, in Houston’s First Ward in the northwestern quadrant of Houston’s Montrose area, lies Olivewood, the city’s first incorporated African American cemetery. It’s been a jungle for years - the headstones have been literally buried under massive carpets of vegetation. Extending over an estimated 8 acres, only the front quarter of the cemetery has been successfully cleared of the seemingly endless tropical abundance including poison ivy and oak. For a long time, only the larger mortuary architecture rising above the undergrowth has hinted at Olivewood’s location.

Olivewood was incorporated in 1875, a mere 10 years after emancipation arrived for Texas slaves when, on June 19, 1865, General Gordon Granger debarked in Galveston and made the official announcement a couple of months after the actual end of the war. The cemetery, the people who incorporated it and the people now resting in it are part of a much larger history of Houston and its African American community.

A number of Houston’s prominent African Americans are buried in Olivewood, including:

  • Elias Dibble, the first black ordained Methodist minister in the country and founder of Trinity Methodist Church. Dibble began life as a slave and arrived in Houston as one of the many freed slaves seeking opportunity

  • Wade Hampton Logan, also an early pastor of Trinity and a presiding elder for the Navasota and Marshall Districts of the Methodist Church

  •  James D. Ryan, philanthropist, educator and community leader who served as the Dean of Negro Education in Houston and was one of the founders of Emancipation Park

  • Dr. Charles B. Johnson, also known as The Singing Dentist and author of Houston’s Bicentennial song “Houston is a Grand Old Town” written in 1927 but performed in 1976.

Each of these men are accompanied by the remains of hundreds of their community members who lived and worked alongside them as shopkeepers, seamstresses, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters and soldiers.

The Descendants of Olivewood are dedicated to the reclamation of this cemetery for the benefit of the present and future generations of Houston. We are committed to restoring, preserving and maintaining Olivewood Cemetery as a historic, educational, charitable, religious and cultural site of importance.

The Descendants of Olivewood have a big job ahead of them and we need your help!

We need people to help us by:

  • Mowing

  • Doing historical research

  • Identifying wildlife

  • Conducting surveys

  • Collecting oral histories

  • Fund raising

For more information, please contact Margott Williams.

View more photos on the Olivewood Cemetery Flickr page.