Melbourne's Historic Cemeteries

The City of Melbourne runs two burial grounds, Melbourne Cemetery on Hibiscus Boulevard and Eau Gallie Cemetery on Masterson Street, according to its Cemeteries page.

The page gives their addresses as 710 E. Hibiscus Blvd. and 992 Masterson St., and lists a cemetery office at 2895 Harper Rd., open by appointment only from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday, at 321-608-7470. Two smaller grounds hold the best documented early burials. Line Street Cemetery, at 718 WH Jackson Street in the old Crane Creek area, was established in 1901 and has been maintained by the city since the land was deeded to it in 1985. The Houston Cemetery, half a block south of the Rossetter House in Eau Gallie, dates to 1865 and belongs to the Rossetter House museum complex. Both have been examined with ground penetrating radar, and both turned out to hold more graves than their stones show.

Line Street Cemetery holds William Wright Brothers, one of Melbourne's founding members, and his wife, Mary Silas, according to a City of Melbourne release dated Nov. 7, 2025.

The release explains that Brothers, Peter Wright and Balaam Allen were formerly enslaved people who settled in Crane Creek in the mid-1880s, and that the cemetery was established in 1901. WKMG News 6 also described the cemetery, which opened in 1901, as the final resting place of founder William Wright Brothers when it reported on the site in October 2024, and Spectrum News 13 named Brothers and his wife, Mary, among the burials in June 2025. The city's release does not publish a roster of the other people buried there, and the graves found by radar have not been identified by name in any city source.

The ground itself nearly disappeared. The city's account says Line Street fell into disrepair and was hidden under overgrown Brazilian pepper trees, weeds and trash until 1980, when a Boy Scout troop spent three weekends clearing it. In 1985 the land was formally deeded to the City of Melbourne for maintenance, and in 2011 the cemetery was recorded as a historic resource.

The October 2024 radar survey found 13 burials inside the fenced boundary and 31 more outside it, mostly to the north, according to the City of Melbourne.

The work had a long lead-up. In 2021 a group of citizens asked the city to survey the cemetery and a few structures in the Crane Creek area, and the city's historic preservation consultant performed surveys in 2022 indicating there could be graves within and outside the fence beyond those that were visible. The city then obtained an Abandoned African-American Cemeteries grant to fund ground penetrating radar work at the cemetery in October 2024. WKMG News 6 reported on Oct. 31, 2024 that the 31 graves found outside the fence brought the Line Street total to 44.

Once the enlarged boundaries were determined, the city began planning further preservation. In November 2025 it announced a $50,000 award from the Florida Division of Historical Resources Abandoned African-American Cemeteries Grant Program to fund a fence containing the newly discovered graves, an interpretive sign and a concrete viewing area. The Historic and Architectural Review Board set a public workshop on the sign's design and content for Nov. 19, 2025, following its regular 6 p.m. meeting in the City Council Chamber. The release gives no completion date for the fence or the sign, so the city's news page is the place to watch for progress.

The Houston Cemetery is the oldest of these grounds, established in 1865 and now one piece of the Historic Rossetter House Museum, which the Florida Historical Society runs as a project with The Rossetter House Foundation.

According to the museum, the Houstons ranked among Brevard County's first settlers and named their 1859 homestead Arlington, which later took the name Eau Gallie. The burial list identifies John Carroll Houston, born July 8, 1816 and died Feb. 17, 1885, as Arlington/Eau Gallie's first settler, and includes his wife, Mary Virginia Houston, who died in 1894, and their son Samuel L. Houston, who died in 1883. The museum also says the family sheltered Civil War blockade runners moving cargo overland between the Indian River and the St. Johns River, and credits Houston with a Reconstruction-era seat on the Brevard County Commission and with opening Brevard's second post office in 1871.

The later name has a documented origin. A Florida Department of State historical marker at the William H. Gleason House says Gleason purchased 16,000 acres of Brevard County land in 1870 and called the area Eau Gallie, pairing "Eau," taken from his hometown and meaning water, with "Gallie," which the marker traces to a Seminole word for rocky.

The museum singles out one feature of the Eau Gallie plot: initialed footstones set in addition to headstones, including one cut with the letters J.C.H. It reports twelve graves remaining. Its burial list also records five children of William and Ada Roesch who died between 1887 and 1895, noting four buried around a single headstone. William R. Roesch, the museum notes, raised his family across the street and served Eau Gallie as postmaster, newspaper publisher and mayor.

As at Line Street, the visible stones understate the count. In April 2010 John J. Schultz and Joanna Fletcher of the University of Central Florida Department of Anthropology ran a ground penetrating radar survey of the Houston Cemetery. Their report counts eighteen anomalies flagged on site and sixteen more found once the data were processed, each matching marked graves in depth and size and lining up with existing rows, and wrote that they would not be surprised if the anomalies represented at least 20 unmarked graves. Because only invasive testing such as probing could confirm them, and that was not recommended, the graves remain unconfirmed.

Much less is published about the two city-run grounds than about Line Street or the Houston plot, because the city's Cemeteries page gives addresses and the Harper Road office but no burial history.

The page lists the office as open by appointment only, so a call to 321-608-7470 is the practical first step for questions about plots or records at either municipal cemetery. Line Street is maintained by the city but does not appear on that page, and the Houston Cemetery belongs to the Rossetter House Museum complex rather than the city.

Taken together, the documented grounds trace two early communities: Crane Creek, where the founders named in the city's Line Street release settled in the mid-1880s, and Arlington, the Houston homestead of old Eau Gallie on the Indian River.

Last verified: October 15, 2026, by checking the city's Cemeteries page and its November 2025 Line Street grant release, the Rossetter House Museum's Houston Cemetery history and burial list, the state historical marker for the Gleason House, and the WKMG and Spectrum News 13 reports on Line Street.