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Overview
Rose Hill Cemetery opened to the public in 1853, and became the new alternative to the older Greenwood Cemetery of which further expansion seemed unlikely. Rose Hill Cemetery boasts a fusion of both the rural Upland South graveyard tradition and the new, European-inspired, Victorian garden cemetery. Rose Hill is 40 acres in size and contains over 13,000 graves. Columbia's Confederate Monument is in Rose Hill Cemetery. It was placed in the Confederate Section of the cemetery, where over 120 Confederate soldiers are buried. War veterans and other notable figures are buried in Rose Hill Cemetery: Edward Carmack a well-known lawyer, newspaper editor, state representative and U.S. Senator; Washington Whitthorne, also a lawyer who served in the state and U.S. senate as well as the state and U.S. House of Representatives; U.S. Senator A. O. P. Nicholson is one of only fifteen people to ever have been expelled from the U.S. Senate! Brigadier General John Carpenter Carter was mortally wounded at the Battle of Franklin. After he died at the Harrison House at Franklin, he was brought to Rose Hill for burial. He is the highest-ranking officer from any war interred at Rose Hill; Columbia & Maury County's only recipient of the Medal of Honor, Pharmacist's Mate John Harlan Willis, was killed in action at Iwo Jima; There are soldiers from the American Revolution through Dessert Storm at Rose Hill. The exact number is not known, but there are well over a thousand veterans in the cemetery.
