Oak Hill Cemetery

One of the oldest surviving Euro-American burying grounds in Michigan dating from the settlement period of the nineteenth century, the original part of Oak Hill Cemetery was established in 1839-41 on ground set aside for cemetery purposes in 1822. Oak Hill is also notable in a statewide context for the variety and quality of its nineteenth- and early twentieth-century funerary art and architecture. The cemetery grounds contain the remains of many of the city of Pontiac's leading citizens of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Oak Hill Cemetery occupies a piece of high ground just to the east of and overlooking Pontiac's central business district. The cemetery grounds are divided into three sections by University Drive and Paddock Street, which cross each other at right angles. Only the two older sections to the west or southwest of Paddock Street are included in this nomination. The area to the north and west of University and Paddock, which contains the original grounds platted in the 1839-41 period, retains its hilly glacial topography and groves of hardwoods, especially the oaks which gave the place its name. The south-of-University section slopes gently southward toward the Clinton River, whose channel (now concrete-lined) marks the southern edge of the grounds. The two nominated sections of the cemetery contain one of Michigan's most extensive collections of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century funerary art and architecture, including a Gothic memorial chapel dating from 1898 and nearly a dozen other family mausolea.