Russ Hatter retired in 2021 following 20 years of service as City Historian at Frankfort’s Capital City Museum. Prior to that, he spent 37 years as the morning announcer on Frankfort’s WFKY/WKYW radio stations. Since arriving in Frankfort in 1965, he has appeared in or directed numerous Pegasus Players, Frankfort High School, and Bluegrass Theatre productions, acted in three local movies, and can still be seen occasionally on Frankfort Plant Board’s Cable 10 with his popular walking tours. He has written and researched numerous books on Frankfort’s incredible history available through Frankfort Heritage Press. Hatter resides with his wife Karen and their little dog MacKaye in South Frankfort.
Frankfort Cemetery: The Westminster Abbey of Kentucky
Kentucky’s capital city is nestled in a valley created by the Kentucky River. Resting atop one of the hills that surrounds the city is the Frankfort Cemetery. Within the hallowed ground of the sacred dead are the remains of those whose memories have been honored and perpetuated since that first interment of Daniel and Rebecca Boone in September of 1845.
The Frankfort Cemetery, incorporated by an act of the Kentucky Legislature and approved February 27, 1844, was the second funerary grounds to be incorporated in the United States, the first being Mount Auburn in Boston, Massachusetts. Rather than discuss here in detail the development of the Frankfort Cemetery, a chronology of major events has been provided elsewhere in this volume.
The necropolis contains the remains of over 22,000 people. This book specifically refers to fewer than five hundred of them. In preparing this collection we included the dead who not only were famous due to their political, military, or community service, but also for whom information was readily available. It was not our intention to diminish, slight, or omit any loved one but to present a variety of personages who would help us to rediscover our past and preserve it for the future.
Because of the variety of distinguished people that are interred within the Frankfort Cemetery, it has often been compared to London’s Westminster Abbey where kings and queens, poets, soldiers, politicians, scientists, doctors, actors, and other celebrated people have been buried or are memorialized.
To assist the reader in locating individual tombs there is a map containing sections and divisions of the cemetery where gravesites can be found. The selected individuals are alphabetically listed in each of the cemetery sections. An index at the back of the book also supplies helpful information.