Mt Zion Cemetery

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Mount Zion Cemetery/Female Union Band Cemetery/Colored Union Benevolent Association is a historic cemetery located at 26th Street NW and Mill Road NW in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., in the United States. Founded in 1808 as The Methodist Cemetery, it was leased and then sold to Mount Zion United Methodist Church. Although the cemetery buried both white and black people since its inception, it served an almost exclusively African American population after 1849. In 1842, the Female Union Band Society purchased the western half of the lot to establish a secular burying ground for African Americans. Both cemeteries were abandoned by 1950, but began to be restored in the 1990s.Both cemeteries are considered a single unit, and were added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 6, 1975.HistoryIn 1808 the Dumbarton Street Methodist Episcopal Church purchased the property. Mount Zion United Methodist Church leased for 99 years the east end of the Dumbarton Church Cemetery in 1879. The west end was purchased by the Female Union Band Society, for the burial of free blacks. Interments ceased in 1950.The Afro-American Bicentennial Corporation conducted an historical study of the Mt. Zion section of the cemetery. The cemetery became an Historical Landmark of the National Capital in 1975, and was placed on the National Register of Historical Places, on August 6, 1975.Restoration is underway, by Dumbarton Church as the owner, Mt. Zion, and the Society for the Preservation of Historic Georgetown.