The Most Elite Real Estate in Winston-Salem Is for the Dead

“Don’t hit your head on the meathooks,” our guide warns as she leads us by lantern through the uneven cobblestone streets of Old Salem. 

We entered the historic market house. Originally built as a vending place for fresh meat, the small building has been transformed for the night into the “corpse house.” Back in 1850, Salem Square included an actual structure that stored the recently deceased, just a short walk from the area’s two noteworthy local cemeteries. 

Inside, we hear the story of Louisa, a young Moravian woman from the 1800s who died a year after giving birth, followed quickly by her baby. But the pair did not end up buried with their fellow Protestants in the Moravian cemetery, God’s Acre, made up of rows of meticulous, identical white grave markers. Instead, they were interred at Salem Cemetery, the neighboring burial ground full of elaborate vault houses and ornate monuments.

The cemetery is a minor, though recurring, character in Winston-Salem’s Night Watchman Tours, a limited series of ghost tours full of eerie and sometimes ghastly tales. All are taken directly from historic accounts of Old Salem—it’s really more of a spooky history tour about early Moravian life led by college-aged guides dressed in period garb. 

At one point during an October 17 tour, our young guide pointed to the John Vogler House on Main Street. When completed in 1819, the large, two-story brick home deviated significantly from the area’s typical Germanic architecture. While the Voglers were tradesmen, theirs was “the bougiest house in Old Salem,” our guide explained. 

The Voglers were also one of the most prominent families in what was then known as Salem, and generations of the family are buried in Salem Cemetery. John Vogler’s son, Elias, was the Salem Cemetery Company’s president at its founding in 1857. 

The cemetery became the final resting place for many of Winston-Salem’s historic or otherwise affluent figures, including knitwear baron John Wesley Hanes and tobacco titan R.J. Reynolds. Notwithstanding the stately vault houses built into the hillside at the bottom of the cemetery that are stamped with “Clemmons” and other prominent local names, the Reynolds family plot is the most impressive. Classical white columns the height of a house mark the final resting place of more than a dozen family members. Behind them: a perfect view of the city skyline.

It’s an impressive—and expensive—piece of real estate. While it’s technically still possible for an average Joe to be buried here alongside renowned figures who transformed the region, it’s unlikely, said Michelle McCullough, the historic resources officer for Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Planning & Development Services. 

“If you were wealthy, Salem Cemetery was the place to be buried,” explained McCullough. Once “the icons of the industrial world” were buried there, other rich and famous people bought up plots for their families. 

“People are still buried at the cemetery all of the time,” she said. “They are most likely the descendants of prominent families still living in our community.”  

While its past is well known, current information about the privately owned and operated cemetery is hard to come by, adding to its mystique. It doesn’t have a website, and there’s little public information about the cemetery’s operations, available burial space, and ownership. While Salem Cemetery supervisor Ryan Sydnor says it’s “a misconception” that the cemetery isn’t for your average person, he allows that the lack of information is “by design.”

“There’s a lot of hesitation around attracting too much attention,” said Sydnor, who was also difficult to find (it required the help of Old Salem Museums & Gardens). “We’ve had a lot of problems with people coming here and acting disrespectful.” 

‘Excites a Wish to Die’ 

Sydnor isn’t the kind of guy you picture overseeing a 168-year-old cemetery. When we met on an unseasonably warm day earlier this month, he emerged from his tiny cinderblock office on Cemetery Street prepared to walk the grounds: his long hair pulled into a low hanging bun, sweater sleeves pushed up, and sunglasses firmly planted on his surprisingly young face. 

Sydnor, 31, runs day-to-day operations of one of Winston-Salem’s most historic landmarks. His only employees are three maintenance workers, who make daily rounds on riding lawnmowers to keep up the exacting standards of the cemetery’s board. The men are also responsible for hand-digging graves. Most cemeteries use a backhoe, but Salem Cemetery’s compact plots and unusual location at the bottom of a ravine make hand-digging a necessity.

Sydnor said he feels at home among the marble obelisks, granite angels, and weatherworn crosses that rise among the cemetery’s century-old oaks and magnolias. But he understands why his family and friends were surprised when he took the job five years ago.

“This job definitely isn’t for everyone,” Sydnor said. “But I’m a pretty spiritual guy, and I don’t really have a problem with death. If anything, this place is really beautiful; it’s very peaceful. I love it more and more the longer I’m here.” 

It’s a stunning property: 17 acres of rolling hillsides, mature trees, and perfectly manicured grounds. It’s also home to red-tailed hawks, deer, skunks, foxes, and other wildlife. For many, cemeteries are haunting, mournful places, but Salem Cemetery’s picturesque landscape lends a different feeling. Sydnor calls it “the Central Park of Winston-Salem.”  

Designed in the style of the Rural Cemetery Movement that emerged in the 19th century, Salem Cemetery and other burial grounds like it marked a change in how Americans viewed death. In 1835, British writer and abolitionist Fanny Kemble described the sprawling, beautiful grounds of a new American cemetery as “a pleasure garden instead of a place for graves” that “almost excites a wish to die.” 

For those who don’t spend their free time walking in cemeteries, McCullough—who does—reiterated that feeling about Salem Cemetery.

“I think it’s one of our most beautiful cemeteries, and it’s a little underappreciated,” she said. “It’s definitely not a place where you go and feel creeped out.”

It’s also not just a cemetery, she points out. “The history there is mindblowing. The reason Winston-Salem is a city today is because of the people buried there.” 

While the public is welcome to walk the grounds, shenanigans have caused its very private board to be wary of attention. Sydnor said that in the 1980s a group of teenagers rampaged through the cemetery, pushing over historic monuments and causing millions of dollars in damage. As more recent examples, Sydnor said he once caught a rap group sipping liquor at the Reynolds family plot while trying to film a music video. A couple of years ago on Halloween, a man dressed as Beetlejuice had to be asked multiple times to leave the cemetery. 

“One of my guys kept telling him, ‘You can’t be in here dressed like that; it’s disrespectful.’ The guy kept saying, ‘What do you mean? I’m not wearing a costume,’” Sydnor said. “You can’t make this crap up.”

Still, Sydnor understands the value of conveying at least some information to the public. During recent meetings with the cemetery’s 10-member board, Sydnor has discussed building a website that features background on the cemetery, pictures of the grounds, and an overview of what’s available for sale—though admittedly, it isn’t much. 

A third of Salem Cemetery is vacant, but a majority of those plots are already sold to local families. For those leaning toward cremation—and a majority are these days—there’s a sizable amount of space available for interring ashes in the columbarium.

Future Generations 

John M. Vogler Jr.—an indirect descendant of the family with the “bougiest” house in Old Salem—is one of the lucky few with a family plot in Salem Cemetery. He is also the sixth-generation owner of Salem Funerals & Cremations; his family has provided deathcare to the region since 1858. 

Originally Frank Vogler & Sons, Vogler’s grandfather sold the business and its name in the 1990s, though Vogler’s father, Mosby, remained president. Mosby broke away to launch Salem Funerals & Cremations in 2006, operating out of the company’s historic Main Street chapel. 

Growing up, John Vogler said, he had no real intentions of joining the family business. But in 2010 he moved back from Colorado and joined the company. Now 42, he says overseeing the business as manager and funeral director has been a “humbling experience.” 

“We often hear stories about an 80-year-old person running through the funeral home when they were a young child here with their parents for a visitation,” Vogler said. “You do get to know the community in a very different way, and I’m grateful that we can provide comfort not just through the services we offer, but because we’re steady. We’re a place that generations of families have learned they can rely on during their hardest time.”

He’s overseen dozens of burials at the Salem Cemetery, where another historic Vogler—Elias Alexander, better known as E.A.—wrote the cemetery bylaws. Few in Winston-Salem can claim the Moravian roots that Vogler can. The first Moravian settlers arrived in North Carolina in 1753. Over the next dozen years, Moravians established communities throughout what is now Forsyth County. Vogler’s family can trace its history to Winston-Salem’s first Moravian settlers, so it might surprise some to learn that his family’s plot is in Salem Cemetery, not in God’s Acre, where members of the Moravian church are still buried according to a “choir system” in which men, women, and children are buried separately and chronologically.

“It’s in a unique geographic location,” Vogler said of his family’s plot in Salem Cemetery. “It basically borders the Moravian graveyard, which is obviously very special for our family. The vantage point means you can see the [traditional Moravian] Easter sunrise service from there, so I sort of think of it as the best of both worlds.”

When Vogler started with the family business, his dad often explained the location of a burial by its relation to the monuments of noteworthy families.

“Because of the business, we have always had these long-standing relationships with some of the older, established families in the area. We’re almost sort of obligated to understand their history because it’s wrapped up in our own. It’s a pretty unique thing,” Vogler said.

It’s rare to see the depth and breadth of a city’s history reflected in a single place, and Winston- Salem residents have that in the Salem Cemetery. While many historically significant families still have strong ties to the region, one in particular maintains an important bond to the cemetery. 

“The Reynolds family set up a trust for Salem Cemetery,” Sydnor explained. “The investment is about making sure this really beautiful place survives and making sure it’s preserved for future generations.” 

Louisa and her baby were buried in Salem Cemetery at a very different time—when it was still possible for someone without a recognizable last name to be buried on this scenic expanse. Still, Salem Cemetery is a lovely place to visit—even if you can’t stay forever.  

Tina Vasquez is a North Carolina-based movement journalist with more than 15 years of experience reporting on immigration, reproductive injustice, food, labor, and culture. Currently, she is features editor at the non-profit newsroom Prism.