Woodland Cemetery at Clemson University began as statesman John C. Calhoun's Fort Hill Plantation graveyard on a hillside early maps showed had been an orchard. The first known burial was a child, also named John C. Calhoun, who died in 1837. Clemson College laid out the present cemetery in 1924 as a graveyard for faculty and staff, and many prominent Clemson University leaders are buried there. Along the hillside below the Calhoun family plot, African Americans enslaved at Fort Hill were buried in graves marked only by field stones, and the exact number of burials is unknown. Beginning in 1890, Clemson College leased prisoners, primarily African Americans, from the state to construct campus buildings, and until 1915 those who died during their incarceration were buried adjacent to the slave cemetery.
