Our Cemeteries

Coming Street Cemetery

KKBE's Coming Street Cemetery (190-195  Coming Street) is the oldest surviving Jewish cemetery in the South. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Buried here are:
  • -- ten congregants who fought in the American Revolution,
  • -- six soldiers of the War of 1812,
  • -- two soldiers in the Seminole Wars in Florida,
  • -- 21 Civil War participants, of whom eight died in the Confederate cause,
  • -- six rabbis of the congregation,
  • -- 18 past presidents of the congregation.
  • --  Four of the eleven founders of the Supreme Council of Scottish Rite Masonry in 1801.
Bronze plaques placed on some tombstones in 1964 identify notable personages.
Except for a few family plots, all present-day burials occur in Beth Elohim's Huguenin Avenue Cemetery, which was established in 1887. When this site was first used as a cemetery, it was outside the then city limits at Calhoun Street.

 The Coming Street Cemetery has three sections:

 A. This area is the original congregational cemetery and dates from 1764; from 1754; it was the DaCosta family plot.
 B. This part was developed by members of Beth Elohim who had seceded in 1841  over the installation of an organ in the synagogue and had formed     Orthodox Congregation Shearit Israel. When the two congregations merged after  the Civil War, a dividing wall was taken down.
 C. The Lopez family plot was established in the 1843  when Shearit Israel refused burial to David Lopez's first wife who had not been converted to Judaism.
The Cemetery contains over 500 graves; many are not marked. The oldest identifiable grave is that of Moses D. Cohen, the first religious leader of Beth Elohim, who died in 1762.

Visitation to the Coming Street Cemetery must be made by appointment. Call 843-723-1090.

For more information about some of the famous Jewish Charlestonians buried in the historic Coming Street Cemetary, logon to www.findagrave.com.

More information about about the history of Charleston's Jewish community can also be found at the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina (JHSSC), www.jhssc.org

Huguenin Avenue Cemetery

KKBE's Huguenin Avenue Cemetery is its present burial ground.  It was first developed on land, which then abutted the northern limit of the City of Charleston.  It was purchased from the Washington Light Infantry in 1887.

The cemetery was expanded in l991 on property bought from the Standard Oil Company in 1943. It contains the remains of persons buried since l888, also remains and stones which were removed from three defunct graveyards: the Dacosta (l783-l939) and Harby (1799-1939) cemeteries on Hanover Street, and the Rikersville Cemetery (1857-1888), which had been established by Congregation Shearit Israel).

Directions

From Calhoun Street take East Bay St. North and pass under the Cooper River Bridge. The street name changes and becomes Morrison Drive. On the right you will pass the recycling center and a noticeably pink small building. At the next traffic light, which is Brigade Street,make a right. Cross the railroad tracks. At the end of Brigade Street, turn left onto Huguenin Avenue. The KKBE Cemetery will be immediately on the right side of the street.

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