Unit of the WILKES STREET CEMETERY COMPLEX This was established in 1795 by request of the Alexandria Council, as a burial ground for indigent paupers and the poor. Freedmen who died in the first years of the Civil War (1861-1863) are thought to have been buried at Penny Hill, prior to establishment of the Contrabands and Freedmen Cemetery. An article in the Alexandria Gazette, July 21, 1885 (reprinted in the Alexandria Chronicle , Spring 1998)describes "A conversation with the Penny Hill Grave Digger." Lewis Dudley was born a slave, and talks about residents of the "Poor's House" being brought there for burial. His wife was buried "in old Penny Hill, on the western side of the carriageway through that ground. A fence composed of some thin strips and a border of clam shells surround the grave..." In the 1920s-1940s, the City Council sold off portions of the old burial ground for the Home of Peace Cemetery and Agudas Achim Cemetery. In 1976, Council decided to preserve the remainder of Penny Hill and to ban further burials there. Most tombstones have been demolished. Today, only eleven scattered stones remain.