File:Louis Schade Grave Detail 02 - Section D-South - Prospect Hill Cemetery - 2014.jpg
Prospect Hill Cemetery was added to the Register of Historic Places of the District of Columbia (a listing of historic sites maintained by the city) in 2005.
Louis F. Schade (1829-1903) was educated in Berlin in law and foreign languages. He became a political activist and was involved in the Revolutions of 1848. Sentenced to death for his activities, he fled to the United States where he became a newpaper reporter. He later worked for the Smithsonian Institution as a librarian, the U.S. Census Bureau and the State Department as a statistician. Active in Democratic politics, Senator Stephen A. Douglas asked him to edit two newspapers in Chicago. Schade defended Confederate war criminal Henry Wirz at the end of the American Civil War, and later claimed Wirz's body and had it buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery. In 1873, Schade purchased the Petersen House (the house where Abraham Lincoln died) and saved it from demoltion. He sold the house to the federal government in 1896.