Holy Rood Cemetery is located at 2016 or 2128 Wisconsin Avenue

Wisconsin Avenue (Washington, D.C.)

Wisconsin Avenue is a major thoroughfare in Washington, D.C., and its Maryland suburbs. It starts in Georgetown just north of the Potomac River, at an intersection with K Street under the Whitehurst Freeway...

 NW at the southern end of the Glover Park

Glover Park

Glover Park is a neighborhood in northwest Washington, D.C., about a half mile north of Georgetown and just west of the United States Naval Observatory and Number One Observatory Circle...

 neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

  It was established by Holy Trinity Catholic Church

Holy Trinity Church of Georgetown

Holy Trinity Catholic Church, was established in 1794 and is located at 3513 N Street, N.W. between 35th and 36th Streets, in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., in the United States...

 in 1832, which purchased additional land in 1853. It stands at one of the highest elevations in Washington, D.C. and has memorable views.

The cemetery was active from the mid-nineteenth century into the early twentieth century (although some burials took place as late as the 1990s). As many as 1,000 free and enslaved African Americans are said to be interred here.

By the 1990s, the cemetery

Cemetery

A cemetery is a place in which dead bodies and cremated remains are buried. The term "cemetery" implies that the land is specifically designated as a burying ground. Cemeteries in the Western world are where the final ceremonies of death are observed...

 showed years of disuse and neglect. Many of the tombstones are toppled, damaged or overgrown, and grass grows up through large cracks in the lone asphalt walkway leading through it.

For some time, the cemetery has been owned by Georgetown University

Georgetown University

Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...

. It would like to remove the graves and reinter the remains elsewhere, level the hill on which the cemetery sits, and develop the land. The university has taken steps to contact possible owners of the plots, to establish which graves can be removed without legal complications.