The Mt Calvary Baptist Church was founded in the 1880s, but the congregation has existed since the 1860s. The Church represents the center of a once thriving African-American community that extended along Morgantown Road. Today this community is threatened by rising taxes and property values. Property deeds in this area illustrate numerous small divisions of land that run perpendicular to an east-west railroad track that lies to the south of the church. These lots housed dozens of African-American families who purchased land after the end of the Civil War. Prior to the founding of the church, this community workshipped at the nearby Episcopal Church, St Paul's. Because of the area's rich heritage, it was chosen as the topic for a documentary film and research project called "Ivy Depot." For more information on this neighborhood, please visit the "Ivy Depot Video Project."

The Mt Calvary Baptist Church has two cemeteries, the original burial ground (labelled in this database as the "Historic Cemetery") and a more recent graveyard, directly behind the church that was opened after the historic one filled up (here we refer to the contemporary cemetery as the "Modern Cemetery"). Both cemeteries are in this database, as well as a family cemetery, the Cooper Family Cemetry, that lies behind the Modern Cemetery.

This page contains links to the Historic Cemetery, which contains burials that date from the 19th Century until the 1980s. There are over 150 gravestones in this cemetery.