About  Us

The Walker Chapel and Cemetery was designated a Local Historic District (LHD) on October 3, 1978. The original church building was demolished between 1936 and 1952. The current chapel was constructed by 1962. The Walker Cemetery is still active, and the entire parcel consists of approximately 2.13 acres. The publication entitled Graveyards of Arlington County, Virginia, compiled by the Arlington Genealogy Club in 1985, states: The Walker family started using the “Walker Graveyard” as a family burial site in 1848 when David Walker was buried there.

The cemetery as it is today was deeded in three parts. The first part was conveyed by Elizabeth Bowen on 1 December 1858 to “William, James and Robert Walker, and James
and John Reid as trustees, the lot to be used as a graveyard.” (William, James, and Robert were sons of David Walker). The second part was conveyed by Elizabeth Bowen on 3 August 1871 to five trustees (including Robert and William Walker) “to be held as a site for a Methodist Protestant Church and Burial Grounds.” This parcel comprised the remainder of the original cemetery. The first Walker Chapel Church was built on this site and was dedicated in 1875.

On 1 October 1879, Robert Walker conveyed a triangular parcel of land to the trustees of Walker Chapel for a nominal consideration of $1. This is the parcel on which the present edifice and the other part of the cemetery is located. In December 2019, the Chapel and Cemetery Trustees submitted a Certificate of Appropriateness (CoA) application seeking conditional approval of a conceptual project to provide their board with reassurance that they could begin fundraising. The HALRB granted conditional approval in January 2020 (CoA 19-27).

we are now three years into the Historic Cemetery Project called the HCP which will expand and enhnance the cemetery for our community and provide new care options to all who wish to rest in a Christian Burial Ground.