Mount Olivet Cemetery is a 206-acre (83 ha) cemetery located in Nashville, Tennessee.
Mount Olivet has been continuously operated since its establishment in 1856. It serves as the final resting place for many of Middle Tennessee's political and business leaders, including several former governors of Tennessee, U.S. Senators, and U.S. Congressional Representatives.
After the American Civil War, women of Nashville formed an association to raise funds to purchase a separate plot of land at the cemetery for the interment of Confederate dead. It became known as "Confederate Circle". It was used for the interment of Confederate soldiers who had died on nearby battlegrounds and as a memorial to their sacrifice. Women organized such memorial associations and raised money for interment of Confederate soldiers in major cities across the South and areas where there were concentrations of bodies. The memorial association arranged for burials of about 1,500 soldiers at Confederate Circle. Confederate veterans were also eligible for interment there.
In the 1990s, a funeral home was added to the grounds of Mount Olivet.
Immediately adjacent to the west, Calvary Cemetery has long served as the preferred burying place of Middle Tennessee Catholics. The two facilities are separated only by grass; one can walk from one cemetery to the other, although each has a separate entrance. Cars cannot pass between the two.
Approximately one mile (1.6 km) to the south is Greenwood Cemetery, where many of the most prominent African-American residents of Middle Tennessee have been buried.
Mount Olivet Cemetery is located at 1101 Lebanon Road, approximately two miles (three km) east of downtown Nashville. It is open to the public during daylight hours.
Adelicia Acklen, wealthy Nashville businesswoman and socialite.
John Meredith Bass, Mayor of Nashville from 1833 to 1834, and again in 1869.
William B. Bate, Governor of Tennessee (1883 to 1887), American Civil War general
John Bell, United States Senator and presidential candidate
Aaron V. Brown, Governor of Tennessee (1845 to 1847), United States Postmaster General from 1857 to 1859
James Stephens Brown, Mayor of Nashville from 1908 to 1909.
George P. Buell, Union Army general
Joseph Wellington Byrns, United States Congressman and Speaker of the House
John Catron, U.S. Supreme Court Justice
Benjamin F. ("Frank") Cheatham, Confederate general during the American Civil War
Mark R. Cockrill (1788-1872), cattleman, planter, and "Wool King of the World".
Clarence Kelley Colley (1869-1956), architect.
Washington Bogart Cooper (1802–1888), painter.
George A. Dickel (1818–1894), liquor dealer and wholesaler
Anne Dallas Dudley (1876–1955), women's suffrage activist
Guilford Dudley, U.S. ambassador to Denmark under the Nixon and Ford presidential administrations, son of Anne Dallas Dudley.
Edward H. East (1830–1904), Tennessee Secretary of State, briefly served as the state's "acting governor" in 1865
Jesse Babcock Ferguson, onetime minister of the Nashville Church of Christ, later associated with Spiritualism and Universalism
Thomas Frist, co-founder of Hospital Corporation of America and father of the former majority leader of the U.S. Senate, Bill Frist
Francis Furman (1816–1899), Nashville businessman during the Reconstruction Era. A building is named in his honor on the campus of Vanderbilt University, and his tomb, designed by sculptor Johannes Gelert (1852–1923), is the largest one in Mount Olivet Cemetery.
Sidney Clarence Garrison (1885-1945), second President of Peabody College (now part of Vanderbilt University) from 1938 to 1945.
Meredith Poindexter Gentry, United States Congressman
Carl Giers, early photographer
Alvan Cullem Gillem, Civil War Union general and post-bellum Indian fighter
Vern Gosdin 1934–2009 country music legend
William Crane Gray, (1835–1919), First Episcopal Bishop of the Missionary Jurisdiction of Southern Florida
Felix Grundy (1775–1840), U.S. Senator from Tennessee and 13th Attorney General of the United States.
George Blackmore Guild (1834–1917), Mayor of Nashville from 1891 to 1895.
Robert Kennon Hargrove (1829–1905), a Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South
Henry C. Hibbs (1882–1949), architect.
E. Bronson Ingram, founder of Ingram Industries Inc., parent company of Ingram Barge Company; Ingram Book Company, the nation's largest book distributor; Ingram Micro; and other major companies
Howell Edmunds Jackson, United States Senator and Supreme Court Justice
William Hicks Jackson, Confederate general during the American Civil War
Thomas A. Kercheval, Tennessee State Senator and Mayor of Nashville
David Lipscomb, founder of Nashville Bible School (now Lipscomb University)
William Litterer (1834–1917), Mayor of Nashville from 1890 to 1891.
George Maney, Confederate Civil War general and U.S. Ambassador to Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay
Jack C. Massey, entrepreneur who helped found or take public Hospital Corporation of America, Kentucky Fried Chicken and two other NYSE-listed companies
Hill McAlister, Governor of Tennessee from 1933 to 1937
Randal William McGavock (1826–1863), Mayor of Nashville from 1858 to 1859 and Confederate Lt. Colonel who was killed in the Battle of Raymond.
Eliza Jane McKissack (1828–1900), founding head of music in 1890 to the forerunner of the University of North Texas College of Music
Benton McMillin, Governor of Tennessee (1899 to 1903)
Kindred Jenkins Morris (1819–1884), Mayor of Nashville from 1869 to 1871.
Thomas Owen Morris (1845–1924), Mayor of Nashville from 1906 to 1908.
William Nichol (1800–1878), Mayor of Nashville from 1835 to 1837.
John Overton, friend of Andrew Jackson and one of the founders of Memphis, Tennessee
Bruce Ryburn Payne (1874-1937), founding president of Peabody College (now part of Vanderbilt University) from 1911 to 1937.
Colonel Buckner H. Payne (1799-1889), clergyman, publisher, merchant and racist pamphleteer.
James E. Rains, American Civil War general killed in the 1862 Battle of Murfreesboro
Fred Rose, music publishing executive
William Percy Sharpe (1871–1942), Mayor of Nashville from 1922 to 1924.
John Hugh Smith (1819–1870), Mayor of Nashville, Tennessee three times, from 1845 to 1846, from 1850 to 1853, and from 1862 to 1865.
Ernest Stoneman, country music performer
David K. Wilson (1919-2007), businessman and philanthropist; major donor to Vanderbilt University and the Republican Party.
