ALL IN A
Day’s Trip Cedar Grove Cemetery Story & Photos by Todd Wetherington
New Bern’s silent sanctuary Behind its walls embedded with shells, mollusks, and other river invertebrates, visitors to New Bern’s Cedar Grove Cemetery enter a world older even than the city’s towering Masonic Temple and Harvey Mansion (though not quite as old as Tryon Palace). The Spanish moss draped cedar trees that give the cemetery its name and the majestically arching mausoleums stand sentinel over a landscape still very much alive with the stories of those who rest there. Established in 1800, the cemetery was owned by Christ Episcopal Church until 1853, when it was transferred to the city of New Bern. According to local historians, it’s almost certain that the cemetery was established in response to the yellow fever epidemics of 1798-99. During the epidemic “so many persons succumbed that at night trenches were dug in the Christ Episcopal church yard in a line near the adjoining property to the northwest... and the bodies were buried there indiscriminately,” reads one contemporaneous account. After 1802 the cemetery became the major New Bern burial ground. The grave markers and cemetery records read like a “Who’s Who” of 19th and 20th century North Carolina’s most influential citizens: William Gaston, congressman, writer, state supreme court justice, and author of the North Carolina state song; William Williams, a portrait artist who painted from life the only Masonic portrait of George Washington; Moses Griffin, who established a free school and served the state throughout his life; John Stanly, lawyer, politician and public servant; and Mary Bayard Clarke, 19th century New Bern poet and writer.
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