Upper Long Cane Cemetery
National Register Listing
Street Address:
Greenville St. at junction with Beltline Rd. Vicinity of Abbeville, SC (Abbeville, SC)
Alternate Name:
Long Cane Cemetery; Upper Long Cane Presbyterian Church Cemetery
NRHP Nomination Form
Record Number:
S10817701013
Description and Narrative:
Upper Long Cane Cemetery, established ca. 1760, is significant as the first cemetery in the vicinity of Abbeville, for its association with the settlement, early growth, and development of Abbeville and Abbeville District, and for its association with prominent area families and individuals of the late eighteenth century through the first half of the twentieth century, including numerous persons important to the city, county, state, and nation. Few cemeteries in South Carolina can rival Upper Long Cane Cemetery for its association with, and ability to convey, the history of a town, its county, its region, for such a long period. Upper Long Cane Cemetery is also significant for its concentration of outstanding gravestone art by master Charleston, South Carolina stonecarvers, skilled artisans who were part of a three-generation lineage of outstanding sculptors in nineteenth century South Carolina belonging to the Walker and White families. There are more than fifty gravemarkers “signed” with the stonecutters’ names on them or attributable by style to particular carvers and their shops, most notably those carved by stonecutters Rowe and White, John White, William T. White, Robert D. White, and Edwin R. White. The cemetery contains more than 2,500 marked graves, many of them in family plots or sections, and an unknown number of unmarked graves, on approximately twenty-five acres. Most grave markers, carved from marble, granite, sandstone, or slate, are headstones (some with footstones), although there are also numerous obelisks, pedestal-tombs topped with urns or crosses, box tombs, table-top tombs, tablets, and other markers of varying materials and shapes. Funerary art ranges from simple engraved tombs, tablets, ledgers, and monoliths to more ornate draped tablets, obelisks, columns, or shafts, with ornaments including such motifs as angels, doves or lambs, open Bibles, weeping willows or palmettos, and flowers, wreaths, and ivy. Listed in the National Register December 17, 2010.
Period of Significance:
circa 1760 – 1960
Level of Significance:
State
Area of Significance:
Social History;Art
National Register Determination:
listed
Date of Certification:
December 10 2010
