Among many notables interred at the Shockoe Hill Cemetery are Chief Justice John Marshall, Unionist spymaster Elizabeth Van Lew, Revolutionary War hero Peter Francisco, and Virginia Governor William H. Cabell.

More than 500 Union Army prisoners of war had been buried in Shockoe Hill Cemetery's adjoining African Burying Ground during the Civil War, but the soldiers remains were moved in 1866 to Richmond National Cemetery, three miles to the east.

In July 2016 the City reclaimed title to several unused plots, on one of which there are plans to install a columbarium with niches to hold urns with cremated remains.

Those plots (and eventually, niches) are available for purchase by the general public, marking the first sale of grave spaces in the Cemetery since about 1900.

The City of Richmond acquired a 28 and 1/2-acre parcel in 1799 for the main purpose of creating a burial ground for white persons.

The land was well outside the center core of the City, located on its northern edge and extending into Henrico County.

An 1816 plan of the city property also depicts the areas in which people of colour and white persons who died at the Poor-house were interred.

By their unanimous decision, the Shockoe Hill Burying Ground Historic District was added to the Virginia Landmarks Register.

[10] Shockoe Hill Cemetery holds the graves of Chief Justice John Marshall;[11] attorney John Wickham (counsel for Aaron Burr in Burr's 1807 treason trial); Revolutionary War hero Peter Francisco; famed Union spy Elizabeth Van Lew, as well as many members of her spy network; Richmond distiller Franklin Stearns, John Minor Botts, a Congressman and later a dedicated Unionist who helped lead opposition to the Confederate government; Virginia Governor William H. Cabell; acting Virginia governors John Mercer Patton (General George S. Patton's great-grandfather), John Rutherfoord, and John Munford Gregory; Judge Dabney Carr; United States Senators Powhatan Ellis and Benjamin W. Leigh; Dr. Daniel Norborne Norton, developer of the Norton grape; more than twenty Revolutionary War veterans; and hundreds of Confederate soldiers.