Stories From Our Souls

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stories from our souls The Living Narratives of Savannah’s Burial Grounds

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stories from our souls The Living Narratives of Savannah’s Burial Grounds

Copyright 2016

stories from our souls The Living Narratives of Savannah’s Burial Grounds

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Anyone who’s lived here more than a half hour will tell you there’s something intriguing about Savannah’s dead. And almost everyone has a story about a ghost or a trip to a cemetery.

We go to the burial sites, knowing we commune with the spirits of colonists, slaves, soldiers, artists and citizens who loved their home so much they couldn’t leave.

Burying grounds were in Oglethorpe’s first plan for the city on Yamacraw Bluff. And they’ve been important in the life of Savannah ever since.

While Bonaventure Cemetery presides as the most famous, Colonial Cemetery is the closest to view for downtown residents and visitors.

Many graves are closer still – the Yamacraw chief Tomochichi, Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene and (maybe) Casamir Pulaski lie in tombs in our squares. Others are not so famous or close, but still hold our attention from their rest in places like Sandfly or Thunderbolt, because it’s not so much about the graves as it is about who’s there.

They are the founders who came before us and labored to build the beautifully diverse Savannah we have now.

Everything we see and everything that draws strangers to us remains here in our sacred burying grounds.

“Stories from our Souls” is not meant to be allinclusive, but it is intended to be a snapshot of the spirits who brought us here and their legacies that still abide among us.

Executive Editor, Savannah Morning News / savannahnow.com

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TIMELINE:

A Micro-history of Savannah’s Burial Grounds 1733: As part of Gen. James E. Oglethorpe’s original plan, the city’s first cemetery was placed on the southern end of Wright Square. It was bordered by Bull, Whitaker, York and Oglethorpe streets. The second cemetery, set up later that year for Jewish settlers, was located in the present day median of Oglethorpe Avenue and Bull Street.

1739: Tomochichi, leader of the Yamacraw Indians and companion of Gen. James E. Oglethorpe, was buried with an impressive ceremony in the center of Percival (now Wright) Square.

1750: A new, larger cemetery, positioned outside the city’s defensive walls, was laid out. Several additions were subsequently made to this burial ground, now known as Colonial Park Cemetery.

be authorized and required to measure and lay out the said two hundred feet square for a burial ground for the Negroes, and that the same so measured and laid off shall be forever considered as a place of burial for the Negroes.”

Circa 1812: A map of the city of Savannah, drawn by Col. Mossman Houstoun, showed a “Negro burying ground,” in the garden lots of the city common, between White Bluff Road and the Road to Thunderbolt and the Sea Islands.

1846: As Colonial Park, still the city’s primary cemetery, become overcrowded, trees and shrubs were planted “to

protect citizens from poisonous effluvia arising therefrom.”

1847: Savannah businessman Peter Wiltberger established the Evergreen Cemetery of Bonaventure, a picturesque 70-acre burial ground located some three miles from the city.

Nov. 10, 1852: Henry R. Jackson delivered the main address at the dedication of Laurel Grove Cemetery. Laurel Grove represented a proper resting place after “life’s fitful fever,” Jackson said. The 100acre cemetery became the primary burial ground for the city. Fifteen acres, now known as

1758: The city transferred

Laurel Grove South, were set aside for the burial of “free persons of color and slaves.”

July 1, 1853: Colonial Park Cemetery, Potter’s Field and the Negro Cemetery were all closed to future burials. Laurel Grove and the Mordecai Sheftall Cemetery were the only legal burial grounds, an internment anywhere else would be “subject to a fine of $500.”

Aug. 2, 1853: Catholic Cemetery opened on an 8-1/3-acre plot on the Thunderbolt Road.

April 3, 1855: According to an article in the Savannah Daily Georgian, “The marshal has nearly

completed the removal of bodies from the Negro Cemetery and Potter’s Field. (They were moved to Laurel Grove.) The grounds are now quite clear, and no longer present a picture of broken fences and stones …”

1864-65: Northern soldiers quartered in Colonial Park Cemetery damaged and defaced vaults and stones.

1867: Naturalist John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, enjoyed several nights at Bonaventure, sleeping under its oaks as he awaited money from his family.

1887: As the Jewish section of Laurel Grove grew crowded, members of Congregation Mickve Israel discussed opening a new section with the operators of Bonaventure, but these initial negotiations were unsuccessful.

1890: Savannah sculptor

ownership of the new burying ground to Christ Church Episcopal.

Aug. 3, 1773: The Mordecai Sheftall Cemetery was dedicated.

It served as the primary cemetery for Savannah’s Jewish population for the next 80 or so years.

John Walz placed the statue of Little Gracie Watson in Bonaventure Cemetery.

1895-96: The city purchased Colonial Park Cemetery back from Christ Episcopal Church.

The cemetery was then designated as a park, and placed under the

1789: A city ordinance, in part, “further ordained that the County Surveyor 6

jurisdiction of the city’s Park and Tree Commission.

1898-99: New live oaks were planted at Bonaventure to replace ones that had been destroyed by recent hurricanes or diminished by old age.

1902: Revolutionary War hero Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene was interred in Johnson Square.

1907: The City of Savannah purchased Bonaventure Cemetery for $30,000.

1909: A 20-acre Jewish section was added to Bonaventure, bringing the cemetery’s total acreage to 160.

1913: The Daughters of the American Revolution erected a marble archway to Colonial Park Cemetery, just off its intersection with Abercorn Street and Oglethorpe Avenue.

1966: The city decided to run the Interstate 16 connector through an unused portion of Laurel Grove Cemetery. Before that, the sections had been separated by custom; afterwards, they were separated by concrete.

1972-73: The Savannah Chapter of the NAACP funded the restoration of the three-crypt burial vault which contains the remains of iconic African-

American ministers and leaders Andrew Bryan, Andrew Marshall and Henry Cunningham.

1994: With the release of “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” much of the world read about Bonaventure, and many of those readers subsequently visited the cemetery. It was also the year that the Bonaventure Historical Society was founded.

2004: Utility workers, digging to repair a gas line outside the Massie Interpretation Center, uncovered a “very old” skull, a possible link to the slave cemetery that was closed in 1853.

2010-11: In a situation similar to Bonaventure in the mid1990s, Colonial Park was forced to deal will several situations stemming from its increasing popularity as a tourist destination.

Congestion on Abercorn Street, including idling tour buses, along with ghostmovie filming and afterhours ghost tours, and the increase in the number of walking tours were listed as problems. In response, the city began citing tour companies for violations.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society papers and publications; “The Old Burying Ground: Colonial Park Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia, 1750-1853,” by Elizabeth Piechocinski; National Register of Historic Places Registration forms for Bonaventure Cemetery and Laurel Grove South Cemetery.

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Plan of Savannah, Original 1820 map

by McKinnon

In this map, Colonial Park Cemetery is located directly to the right of this text, and is marked with the icon of a willow tree.

Several blocks to the south is the space allotted for the ‘New Cemetry,’ (sic.) the original slave burial grounds.

Source: City of Savannah Archives 8

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colonial park cemetery

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The Stories of Georgia’s Beginnings A signer of the Declaration of Independence. British Colonial leaders. Revolutionary War heroes. Religious figures. Duelists. Captains of industry. Yellow fever victims. A wall of headstones. Alterations made to gravestones by Union soldiers.

Conversion from a forlorn burial ground to a city park. The city’s oldest cemetery enjoys wild, current popularity, particularly with ghost and walking tours.

What has happened here, in Colonial Park Cemetery, “is the story of Savannah,” said Elizabeth Piechocinski, the author of “The Old Burying Ground: Colonial Park Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia, 17501853.”

It dates back to 1750, when the city’s first burial ground on Wright Square was closed. In 1758, Christ Church Episcopal acquired the new cemetery and took over its operation.

A 1770 map in the collections of the Georgia Historical Society shows the cemetery at the southeast edge of the city, outside its defensive walls.

It was enlarged several times, the last in 1789 when it was moved out to measure 500 square feet. As part of the expansion, it was to be a “public burial ground for the internment of all Christian people of whatever denomination.”

It acquired, over the years, several names, including the Cemetery of

Christ Church, the Old Cemetery, the South Broad Street Cemetery, and the Brick Cemetery, which referred to the wall, made of some 300,000 bricks, crafted around it in the 1790s.

It is approximately six acres in size and contains more than 9,000 burials, thousands of which are no longer marked. “See these bricks,” said Piechocinski, looking down at the handful of barely visible bricks she was standing on during a recent interview, “this was once a vault.”

The oldest legible headstone of the 600 or so that remain is dated 1767.

It stands near the marble archway put up by the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1913 at the cemetery’s Abercorn Street – Oglethorpe Avenue entrance.

Nearby, just off the fence along Oglethorpe Avenue, is the final resting place of Samuel Elbert, a Revolutionary War general and early governor of Georgia. Elbert died in

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1788, and was buried at Rae’s Hall, one of the Savannah River plantations.

His remains were accidentally uncovered, said Piechocinski, and he was subsequently reinterred in Colonial Park in 1924 with full military honors.

The Graham Vault, a little further up Oglethorpe, has been quite busy for a cemetery spot. It was originally the property of British Colonial Lt. Gov. John Graham, but he was forced to leave Savannah, along with several shiploads of other Loyalists and their slaves, in 1782. Patriot Revolutionary War hero Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene, who died of sunstroke, was laid to rest in the vault in 1786.

Sometime after that, his family left the city, and, while people knew he was interred in Colonial Park, no one knew exactly where. In 1901, after a search that opened up nine other vaults, Greene’s remains were finally found, and reburied the next year in

COLONIAL PARK CEMETERY Johnson Square.

Nor was that the last Revolutionary War figure to turn up in the Graham vault. In 1981, Savannah pathologist Dr. Preston Russell discovered the fragmented remains of Lt. Col. John Maitland, a hero – on the British side – of the 1779 Siege of Savannah.

An imposing columned marble monument to a key leader in the Patriot cause, Button Gwinnett, stands just a few feet away. One of Georgia’s three signers of the Declaration of Independence (the others were Lyman Hall and George Walton), Gwinnett was mortally wounded in a duel with Gen. Lachlan McIntosh the next year. Erected in 1964, the monument pays tribute to Gwinnett’s contributions to Georgia and the United States,

Richard” and the “Serapis”, Archibald Bulloch, the first president of Georgia.

In 1820, the city and the cemetery were caught up in a months-long catastrophe, a yellow fever epidemic in which 666 people died, some 10 percent of Savannah’s total population. A historical marker points out that “many victims” were buried in Colonial Park.

A number of the gravestones and markers attached to the brick wall along the cemetery’s eastern border – one of the four original walls – date from that disaster.

By the 1840s, some 90 years after it opened, the grounds of Colonial Park were packed. “It is almost impossible, even under

...it was to be a “public burial ground for the internment of all Christian people of whatever denomination.” but does not mark his burial spot, which is unknown.

That is certainly not the case with McIntosh, who lies along the Abercorn Street border of the cemetery, beneath a historical marker that chronicles his military career and patriotic contributions.

Other prominent Colonial and Revolutionary War figures in the cemetery include: James Habersham, a companion of evangelist George Whitefield, prominent Colonial merchant and acting Royal Governor of Georgia, Capt. Denis L. Cottineau de Kerloguen, who aided John Paul Jones in the epic naval Revolutionary War battle between the “Bon Homme 12

the present restrictions there, to deposit the body of a friend without disturbing the remains of others, in many cases, of near and dear relations,” one newspaper article said.

In 1849, exasperated citizens petitioned the city to establish a modern burial ground. By 1853, Bonaventure, Laurel Grove and Catholic cemeteries were all accepting burials, and Colonial Park, on July 1, 1853, was closed.

During the Civil War, many of its gravestones and markers were defaced by Union soldiers, who, along with their horses, were quartered there.

Piechocinski, in her book on the cemetery, lists 21 specific instances. Some of the changes were “crudely done,” she wrote, “while others show some degree

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COLONIAL PARK CEMETERY of expertise.”

The Old Cemetery Association, a shortlived attempt to preserve Colonial Park, was organized in 1868, but the old burial ground continued to languish until it was purchased by the city in mid-1890s.

Covenants restricting future development were an integral part of the transaction.

Piechocinski makes the situation clear in her book, stating Christ Church’s concern that “the city would develop this valuable piece of property, remove the walls, cut streets, and generally desecrate the site as had been done with the first burial ground.” (This today is marked only by a small plaque on the side of a building on York Street.)

The city did take down three of the walls, but that was part of a general plan to turn the old cemetery into a popular park. Postcards from the turn of the century show an open vista into the cemetery from Oglethorpe Avenue.

Today, under the auspices of the city’s Park and Tree Commission, the cemetery is a popular destination, perhaps, for some, even too popular. An oft-uneasy truce exists between local residents and tour companies, particularly concerning foot traffic after the cemetery’s posted closing times.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society papers and publications; “The Old Burying Ground: Colonial Park Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia, 1750-1853,” by Elizabeth Piechocinski; “Savannah: A History of Her People Since 1733,” by Dr. Preston Russell and Barbara Hines; www.savannahga.gov.

Nov. 4, 1980 – Armstrong State College anthropology instructor Carter Hudgins, left, and local physician and amateur historian Preston Russell view bones believed to be those of Revolutionary War hero John Maitland. Hudgins, Dr. Russell and several students exhumed the remains from the Graham vault (below left) in Savannah’s Colonial Park Cemetery. The remains were laid out in an orderly fashion in order to determine what kinds of bones were found.

Long Search Finds Remains of Scot Who Led British In the summer of 1981, Savannah pathologist Dr. Preston Russell made a remarkable discovery – the long-lost remains of the officer who saved the British cause during the 1779 Siege of Savannah.

Lt. Col. John Maitland and a regiment of some 800 Highlanders were in Beaufort, S.C., in mid-September when French and American forces surrounded the British forces inside the fortified walls that guarded the city. In the face of French demands that he surrender, the British commander delayed and stalled for time, hoping those reinforcements could make it. And, using a little-known passage through the swamps on the back side of the Savannah River, Maitland and his men came through and marched into the city.

That march turned the tide in favor of the British, and the siege ended shortly after a failed allied attack on the morning of Oct. 9, 1779. Maitland, however, had little time to celebrate. He died just a short time afterwards, a victim of yellow fever.

He was laid to rest in Colonial Park Cemetery, in the vault of British Lt. Gov. John Graham. Banished from Georgia in 1782, Graham was never placed inside the vault, but several other people were, including Maitland and American Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene, the victim of sunstroke in 1786.

Greene’s remains were finally found and identified in 1901, but those of Maitland had a much longer wait. Russell became interested in the British colonel’s fate after watching a bicentennial re-enactment of the Siege of Savannah and reading “Storm Over Savannah: The Story of Count d’Estaing and the Siege of the Town in 1779.”

Based on a hunch, Russell opened the Graham vault, and, using largely circumstantial evidence, determined that remains, fragments of bone and teeth, found there were those of Maitland. In August of 1981, he took the remains back to Scotland, and they were placed in the Maitland family vault in St. Mary’s Cathedral in Haddington.

Maitland and Major John André, executed for his involvement with Benedict Arnold, were the only British casualties of the Revolutionary War whose remains were repatriated.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; njpostalhistory.org ,“Savannah: A History of Her People Since 1733,” by Dr. Preston Russell and Barbara Hines.

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Tomochichi’s Funeral, a Pyramid in a Square, and a Debate The October 1739 funeral of Tomochichi was, in every sense of the expression, a command performance: Gen. James E. Oglethorpe simply commanded everyone in the colony, British and Indian, to attend.

A little overbearing, perhaps, but there remains the sense that the venerable mico of the Yamacraws merited that level of respect and recognition. He had welcomed the general in 1733, sailed to England with him in 1734, and accompanied him on countless conferences with other Indian leaders in the pivotal early years of the colony.

Tomochichi had done all this at an advanced age – in 1739, he was thought to be in his late 90s – so, when the end came, his death was no surprise. But, his request to be buried in the city he

and Oglethorpe had founded did raise some eyebrows. It was, according to historian Julie Anne Sweet, a “significant deviation from native tradition,” which called for him to be laid to rest in Yamacraw Bluff.

In 1739, the city’s primary burial ground was located on two residential lots on the south side of Percival (now Wright) Square. But Oglethorpe, in a further measure of his regard for Tomochichi, insisted on placing the body in the center of the square.

“The corps (sic) was brought down by water,” according to the March 1740 edition of The Gentleman’s Magazine of London. High-ranking officials, such as Oglethorpe and colony secretary William Stephens, followed it through the streets, along with “the Indians, Mag16

istrates, and People of the Town. …

There was the respect paid of firing Minute Guns from the Battery all the time from the Burial, and funeral firing with small arms by the Militia, who were under Arms.”

Tomochichi’s wife, Senauki, and his nephew, Toonahowi, put the chief’s blanket, headdress, beads and arrows, along with a few pieces of silver, into the grave.

Oglethorpe further directed that a pyramid of stone was to be arranged atop the grave. Another account in The Gentleman’s Magazine said the pyramid “being in the Centre (sic) of the Town, will be a great Ornament to it, as well as Testimony of Gratitude.”

A 1757 map of the city, drawn by William Gerard De Brahm, the surveyor

general of Georgia, shows “Tamachychee’s Tomb” at the center of Percival Square. And, in an important detail, a symbol for a pyramidal monument is included in the drawing.

This “may well have been the first public monument in America and was unique in the Colonial era in honoring a Native American,” said Robin B. Williams, the chairman of the architectural history department at the Savannah College of Art and Design, in “The Challenge of Preserving Public Memory: Commemorating Tomochichi in Savannah,” a 2012 article in the journal Preservation, Education and Research.

The fate of that first tribute to Tomochichi, however, is unknown. It “disappears from the documentary record,” wrote Williams.

A search for “Tomochichi” at savnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu, a compilation of 17 separate Savannah newspapers with publications dates ranging from 1809 to 1880, yields but 14 results, and most of them link to the steamer Tomochichi, which frequently sailed from Darien to Savannah in the 1830s with shipments of cotton. Noted Georgia historian Charles C. Jones Jr. in his 1868 biography of Tomochichi lamented that “the precise spot where this Indian chief was interred has passed from the recollection of the thousands who daily throng the streets and loiter among the parks of the beautiful city of Savannah.”

In 1871, the city put up a modest earthen mound in the center of Wright Square. This was likely not any sort of tribute to Tomochichi as a similar mound had been set up in Madison Square the year before, and additional mounds in Columbia, St. James (now Telfair) and Chatham squares were under consideration. Though short-lived – it was torn down some 11 years later – this diminutive dune did have a lasting legacy: It confused generations of historians, some of them right down to the present day.

A Dec. 6, 1882, article in the Morning News noted that “the familiar mound in (Wright) square is being rapidly removed … preparatory to the erection of the monument to the late (William Washington) Gordon, first president of the Central Railroad.” Completed in 1883, the imposing tribute has dominated the square ever since.

But, several years later, another Gordon led the effort to place a new monument to Tomochichi in Wright Square. Nelly Gordon – the first president of the National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in the State of Georgia, and William Washington Gordon’s daughter-in-law – helped secure the massive boulder of Georgia granite that was positioned in a corner of the square.

Images of Wright Square Featuring Tomochichi’s Grave (1856-1870) Wright Square, New York Public Library photo.

Tomochichi’s monument in Wright Square as it currently stands. Dedicated on April 21, 1899, the boulder is decorated with a bronze tablet that reads “In Memory of Tomochichi – the Mico (chief) of the Yamacraws – the companion of Oglethorpe – and the friend and ally of the Colony of Georgia.”

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• FROM OUR FILES •

WRONG PLACE IN WRIGHT SQUARE

CLAXTON MAN: MOVE MONUMENT

BY TOM ROSE

FEB. 2, 1993

While historical accounts show that he is not buried in that location, there is now some question as to whether Tomochichi’s remains are still at the center of the square.

A Claxton man wants to end what he sees as more than 110 years of injustice to the memory of one of the important men in the founding of Savannah.

Ever since he learned about it as a child in Savannah, Ira S. Womble Jr., has been disturbed that the memorial monument to Tomochichi, chief of the Yamacraw Indians, is not over his burial site.

The monument, a granite boulder, sits in the southeast corner of Wright Square. However, Womble believes Tomochichi’s remains are buried about 15 yards away, under the site where a monument now stands in honor of William Washington Gordon, founder of the Central of Georgia Railroad.

“I think the city should move the (Gordon) monument,” Womble said. It’s a beautiful monument, but I just hate the idea that it’s parked right on top of Tomochichi’s grave.”

Womble is proposing the Gordon monument be moved to the Savannah Visitor’s Center, which is housed in a renovated railroad depot. While he’s found support from a Creek Indian activist, some local American Indians are not sure about the proposed move.

Historical accounts of Savannah’s settling in the 1730’s credit Tomochichi with paving the way for a peaceful settlement on Yamacraw Bluff by the English. He signed a friendship and trade treaty with General James Oglethorpe on May 18, 1733.

The two leaders became friends, with Oglethorpe even taking Tomochichi and his family to England.

The friendship lasted until Tomochichi’s death in 1739.

Oglethorpe honored the Indian chief with a military funeral and burial in Percival Square, later renamed Wright Square. The burial site was marked by a large earth and stone mound.

“The General (Oglethorpe) has ordered a Pyramid of Stone to be erected over the Grave, which being in the Centre of the Town, will be a great Ornament to it, as well as testimony of Gratitude,” a writer stated in a letter to London’s “Gentleman’s Magazine” in 1739.

The burial mound remained in Wright Square until 1882, when it was leveled to make way for a

monument to Gordon.

The razing prompted little objection at the time, according to newspaper accounts. One reader of the paper did suggest that Wright Square would be better suited for a proposed monument to Oglethorpe since he and Tomochichi were friends.

“Thus within the half acre of that square familiar to both would stand the memorials, visible to the eyes of every passerby, of the noble hero who founded our city, and the no less noble Indian who with singular simplicity and faith, welcomed him here and protected the infant life of his colony, two characters of which Savannah and Georgia ought never to lose the remembrance,” the reader wrote.

Tomochichi’s burial site remained unmarked for several weeks until the Georgia Society of the Colonial Dames of America, head at the time by Gordon’s daughter-in-law purchased the boulder for $1 and had it placed in the square.

Many visitors to the square are left with the false impression that Tomochichi is buried under the boulder, Womble said.

While historical accounts show that he is not buried in that location, there is now some question as to whether Tomochichi’s remains are still at the center of the square. Some have speculated that a skeletal remain found in the foundations of the Lutheran Church of the Ascension on the perimeter of the square was Tomochichi; however the discovery came prior to the destruction of the burial mound.

Based on accounts of the leveling of the burial mound, Womble thinks the grave was left intact.

Others disagree.

“The grave is gone,” said John Duncan, a history professor at Armstrong State College, who noted that the Gordon monument must be anchored at least 10 feet deep.

“It was probably a mistake to put the Gordon monument on that site, but now that it’s been there more than 100 years….well, there are much more pressing problems for Savannah, Georgia and the country than moving a monument,” Duncan said.

“I appreciate the view that an Indian grave was desecrated, but to move the monument now would

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seem almost frivolous.

While Tomochichi has been honored as one of Savannah’s early heroes, the importance of his role in its history is arguable. American Indians had left the Georgia coast by the time the English arrived and Tomochichi, apparently banished from western Georgia, had only a small band of Indians with him.

“The history of Savannah would pretty much be the same had there been no Tomochichi,” Duncan said.

Womble, an avid history buff who owns the Georgia Fruitcake Co. in Claxton, had a great, great grandmother who was full-blooded Creek Indian.

He said Jim McGhee of Creek Indians Inc., based in Townson, plans to lead a demonstration in Wright Square on Georgia Day, Feb. 12.

McGhee, who does not have a telephone, could not be reached for comment on how plans for the demonstration have progressed.

Several Savannahians of Indian descent said that while they had not heard about Womble’s proposal or the planned demonstration, the issue of Tomochichi’s grave is known to them.

“I’m undecided on what the right thing is on that,” said Sparrow Sines, a Savannah woman of Cherokee Indian descent. “I’m not wild about the monument being on Tomochichi’s burial site, but I’m not sure about moving it.

Pat Whitlock, of Seminole Indian descent, said he is not sure what moving the monument would accomplish.

“I don’t think anything would ever wipe out the insult, for one,” Whitlock said. “Secondly, I question what’s left under it (the Gordon Monument). If we leave it alone we can say Tomochichi is under there, but if we go under it and don’t find anything, what are we going to do then?”

For Womble, moving the monument would be one step toward righting the wrongs of Savannah forefathers.

“It was just one of those things that shouldn’t have happened, but it did,” Womble said. “If they would now do what’s right, it would be a benefit to the entire city.”

TOMOCHICHI Dedicated on April 21, 1899, the boulder is decorated with a bronze tablet that reads “In Memory of Tomochichi – the Mico (chief) of the Yamacraws – the companion of Oglethorpe – and the friend and ally of the Colony of Georgia.”

Those should have been the last words in this chronology, but a misinterpretation of the small mound that stood in the square for some 10 years rekindled the debate over Tomochichi’s final resting place. Savannah historian Dolores Boisfeuillet Floyd, writing in the Savannah Morning News on Feb. 14 and Feb. 21 of 1937, said “the pyramid ordered by Oglethorpe was actually erected there and stood until 1882.”

She based that conclusion on a photograph of the earthen mound and the recollections of William Harden (18441936), a long-time librarian at the Georgia Historical Society.

In two lengthy and detailed articles, Floyd does not refer to the 1871 and 1882 Morning News articles that clearly delineate the temporary nature of the mound. Understandable, in those days before microfilm and the internet.

She does, however, forcefully state Harden’s charge that the original burial mound, the one ordered by Oglethorpe, was still standing in 1882, and that it was demolished and replaced by the Gordon monument.

“In subsequent years, both popular and scholarly accounts have perpetuated the mistaken belief that the mound demolished in 1882 was the actual grave of Tomochichi,” professor Williams wrote.

Examples of that are easy to find, including 1993 and 2004 Savannah Morning News articles, the website of the National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in the State of Georgia, and even the estimable New Georgia Encyclopedia, which states “the mound of stones honoring (Tomochichi’s) final resting place in Savannah was removed in the early 1880s … “ Sources: Savannah Morning News files; New Georgia Encyclopedia; “Negotiating for Georgia: British-Creek Relations in the Trustee Era, 1733-1752,” by Julie Anne Sweet; “The Challenge of Preserving Public Memory: Commemorating Tomochichi in Savannah,” by Robin B. Williams, Preservation Education & Research, Volume Five, 2012; georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu.

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A Hero, Lost and Found Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene Savannah frequently placed honors upon Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene after the Revolutionary War, naming the Nathanael Greene Monument, Greene Square and Greene Ward after the Rhode Islander who skillfully led the Southern Campaign that backed the British forces under Cornwallis into Yorktown.

Savannah mournfully placed Greene’s body into a vault at Colonial Park Cemetery after the general tragically died at his Mulberry Grove plantation of sunstroke in 1786. Several military units, included the Chatham Artillery, escorted his body to the cemetery, with “Musick playing a solemn dirge,” according to a Georgia Gazette article.

Savannah inexplicably misplaced Greene’s body some 30 or 40 years after that. An 1819 search, during which several vaults were opened, proved unsuccessful. The Aug. 19, 1823, Savannah Republican listed city expenses for the previous year, including $13.37 for “searching for remains of Gen. Greene.”

Still, it wasn’t like he had been forgotten. The cornerstone to the Greene Monument was laid on March 21, 1825, by the Marquis de Lafayette, then on a lengthy tour of the United States.

“In the very name of Greene are remembered all the virtues and talents which can illustrate the patriot, the statesman, and the military leader,” Lafayette said.

The monument, a 50-foot-high obelisk, was made of seven pieces of white marble from New York, each weighing more than four tons. It was completed in 1830. At the time, it was the only monument in the city, thus Johnson Square was referred to as “Monument Square” in the Savannah newspapers for years.

Finally, in 1901, another, more concerted effort was made to find Greene’s remains. It was spurred by the Society of the Cincinnati of Rhode Island, which, in 1783, elected Greene as its first president.

The society “thought it shameful that the bones of ‘such a great patriot and soldier’ should be interred in an unknown, unmarked grave,” an article on the website of the Sons of Liberty Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution said. Asa Bird Gardiner, “a dignified Yankee,” was sent to Savannah “on a morbid mission,” to find “the forgotten bones of a great American.”

A local committee was formed to assist him. It included P.D. Daffin, chairman of the Savannah Park and Tree Commission; Walter G. Charlton, president of the Sons of Revolution of the State of Georgia; George A. Mercer, president of the Georgia Historical Society; and William Harden, longtime librarian of the GHS. 20

NATHANAEL GREENE

Watched each day by a large and often vocal crowd, the searchers methodically went from vault to vault. “It is probable that Gardiner will play to a full house as long as he is here,” according to an article in the Savannah Evening Press.

“Workmen of the Park and Tree Commission and the members of the committee crawled through the narrow opening that was made (in the vaults) and made their examinations of bones, pieces of coffin and other articles that were found,” the article continued.

“Lanterns were used in the vaults, as the openings did not admit enough light to reveal their contents clearly.”

After six unsuccessful excavations, the committee turned its attention to four “well known” Colonial vaults that ran in a line perpendicular to Oglethorpe Avenue, just off its connection to Lincoln Street, Gardiner wrote in a rare pamphlet now in the possession of the GHS. “There was no certainty,” he added, “as there were absolutely no marks of identification.”

By March 4, the effort was down to two vaults. The first of those was empty. The second contained the remains of Robert Scott, who died in 1845, and, on its other side, two bodies amid the fragments of old coffins.

Looking at the first of these, the workers found “a (coffin) plate where it should be, down among the bones of the breast,” Gardiner wrote. The silver plate was dated “1786,” and the letters “eal” and “reene” were also discernible. It was, at long last, Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene.

Savannah inexplicably misplaced Greene’s body...

The other body was that of his teen-age son, George Washington Greene, who had drowned in the Savannah River in 1793, and was placed in the vault with his father.

The bodies were placed in coffins made of hardwood, lined with zinc, carried by a horse-drawn hearse to the Southern Bank of Georgia on Johnson Square (today the site of the Bank of America), and placed in a vault. The search was over, but another question remained: which state, Georgia or Rhode Island, would rebury the Revolutionary War hero?

The final decision was put to the descendents of Nathanael Greene, who decided in an overwhelming vote, 15-3, to keep him in Savannah.

The reburial took place on Nov. 14, 1902. The ceremony had a martial tone, with military units participating in a lengthy parade that started at Colonial Park Cemetery and wound its way to Johnson Square. The U.S. Army Artillery Band from Fort Getty on Sullivan’s Island participated, along with a full contingent of regulars from Fort Screven and the Georgia Hussars and Savannah Volunteer Guards.

Greene’s coffin was borne in a caisson handled by the Chatham Artillery, the same unit that had marched alongside his body in 1786.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society papers and publications; www.revolutionaywararchives.org; www. societyofthecincinnati.org.

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bonaventure cemetery

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Where the Oaks Guard Sacred Ground Savannah’s romance with Bonaventure Cemetery, once a small family burial plot on a former Colonial plantation, did not start in 1846 when hotelier Peter Wiltberger purchased the property, nor in 1890 when sculptor John Walz introduced Little Gracie, or in 1994 when John Berendt released his bestseller.

The spark that lit the relationship actually took place much, much earlier, back when George was still king, and echoes of Gen. James E. Oglethorpe could still be heard in the sandy streets of a struggling British outpost. It occurred in 1748, when “the brave old oaks which now line the avenues … were transplanted” on the property, according to a Dec. 19, 1846, article in the Savannah Daily Republican.

Those majestic oaks, some of which stand today, remain the brightest stars in the sumptuous, scenic, and oft-sad script that chronicles this cemetery’s history.

They were also, back in the 1840s, a tangible asset and potential selling point in a contentious city of Savannah antebellum argument: Where would the replacement cemetery for Colonial Park, then bursting with burials, be placed?

The Tattnall family, which along with its Mullryne relatives had owned Bonaventure almost continually since 1753, thought it had the answer.

“Conversation with many citizens has led me to the present measure of offering Bonaventure to the Board of Alderman as a desirable site for a public cemetery. There, interments can be made far removed from the city. The dead (would) repose under the shade of the oaks of the soil.

The structures of beauty and taste corresponding with the views, the circumstances of all, and the long remembered affection to the departed friends, can be erected,” eloquently wrote Jos. Cumming, acting as agent for Capt. (later promoted to commodore) Josiah Tattnall III, in the Aug. 23, 1845, pages of the Savannah Daily Republican.

Another writer, citing oft-expressed concerns about the distance (three or so miles from downtown) to Bonaventure, suggested that Savannah establish two cemeteries, one at the old plantation and the other nearer the city “so that citizens might have a choice,” in the June 19, 1845, edition of the Republican.

The next year, Tattnall did make a deal for Bonaventure, selling its 600 acres to Wiltberger, the owner of the Pulaski Hotel, for $5,000. After the transaction, Wiltberger quickly turned to “further beautifying the place, preparatory to it being converted into a suburban resting place for the dead,” the Republican said in a Dec. 19, 1846, article.

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A new burying ground In 1847, Wiltberger set up the Evergreen Cemetery of Bonaventure, a 70-acre portion of the estate that included the remains of several members of the Tattnall family, among them Harriet Fenwick Tattnall, whose 1802 burial was the first of an adult on the grounds. In 1848, the body of Dr. William Roberts was interred in a vault on Bonaventure, the first such ceremony since the property had opened as a business.

“The remains were followed to their last resting place by a disconsolate mother and sister, and by a small circle of friends,” an article in the Republican said. A member of the U.S. Army medical staff, the 29year-old Roberts had been mortally wounded in 1847 while “leading a charge” during a battle in the Mexican War. James Rion, a University of South Carolina student hired by Wiltberger in 1849 to design Bonaventure in the rural cemetery style, noted the “active preparations … going on to fit the place for a cemetery. At the end of one of the avenues, I saw a neat monument, recently erected.”

Rion cleverly fashioned lengthy, curving lanes lined with those century-old oaks as the centerpiece of a plan to produce a relaxed, rustic park atmosphere at Bonaventure. The

BONAVENTURE CEMETERY

Those majestic oaks, some of which stand today, remain the brightest stars in the sumptuous, scenic, and oft-sad script that chronicles this cemetery’s history. trees, he said, were “living colonnades” on which nature had placed a “magnificent drapery of moss.”

“The only objection I have heard anyone urge against it,” Rion added, “is its distance.”

admission.”

In 1853, Peter Wiltberger died, and control of the cemetery passed to his son, William H. Wiltberger. Changes were made by the new leadership, as evidenced by a Jan. 1, 1861, newspaper advertisement: “These beautiful grounds have recently been surveyed and laid off into lots and avenues … The proprietor has gone to considerable expense to add to its natural attractions, which are unsurpassed, and the admiration of visitors from every land.

The lots are offered for sale on reasonable terms.”

The war and the lure of nature

Wiltberger, further exercising his control over the property, took out a Jan. 24, 1850, notice in the Republican: “The managers of the Evergreen Cemetery of Bonaventure hereby give notice to the public that the grounds of said cemetery are now closed. Lot holders may visit the grounds at their pleasure; others, not lot holders, may do so on obtaining tickets of

Later that year, of course, the Civil War began, and William Wiltberger fought for the Confederacy, reaching the rank of major. Ironically, after the 1864 capture of Savannah, his cemetery became a favorite spot for Union officers.

“I went yesterday to see Bonaventure,” an infantry officer from Iowa wrote. “It is one of the most picturesque, as well as gloomy places I was ever in!” He commented specifically on the moss, saying that its thick accumulation on the tall trees produced “a gloomy spectral appearance to the place that seems very appropriate to the last resting place of fallen greatness.”

In 1867, another visitor was so impressed by Bonaventure’s beauty, and so impoverished by temporary circumstances, that he spent several nights sleeping under its oaks. While there, he listened to the screams of bald eagles every morning, wrote John Muir in his epic account “A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf.” In all, Muir spent five or six nights in Bonaventure.

Each day, he walked into Savannah to see if a letter with funds from his brother had arrived. When it finally did, he immediately treated himself to a large piece of gingerbread, quickly followed by a large meal at an eating place in a market. As for the cemetery, Muir, who went on to found the Sierra Club, never forgot his stay, or 24

what he saw. “The most conspicuous glory of Bonaventure is its noble avenue of live oaks,” he wrote. “They are the most magnificent planted trees I have ever seen.”

Those were apparently lean times for William Wiltberger as well. In 1868, he, along with other officers of the Evergreen Cemetery Company, made an attempt to convey Bonaventure to the city.

An account of a city council meeting in the June 27, 1868, edition of the Savannah Daily News and Herald related that, if the proposal was accepted, one-fourth of the amount received from the sale of lots would go to the city to help keep the cemetery in order, and the other three-fourths would be paid to Wiltberger. The proposal was referred to the Committee on Finance.

In 1869, Wiltberger sold the cemetery’s original 70 acres, along with an additional 70 acres, to the Evergreen Cemetery Company. A Nov. 30, 1869, story in the Savannah Morning News set out some of the problems the organization faced: “Laborers have been for some time employed in clearing away the undergrowth and rubbish, which had accumulated during the war, when the grounds were necessarily neglected.”

A report from a special correspondent of the New York Times, published in the April 28, 1871, edition of the Morning News, tossed out an old bugaboo and referred to recent problems. Bonaventure’s “too distant from the city” location had led to a temporary closure, he wrote, and added that, “It is now again a cemetery, though its monuments do not attract any special attentions.”

Bonaventure’s grand forest avenues, “unequaled in any other place that I have ever visited,” were the feature that made it distinctive, he added.

It may, or may not, have been a coincidence, but a notice the next month in the Morning News announced that Bonaventure had reduced the price of its lots to eight-cents per square foot. That made lots available at prices from $15 to $75.

William Wiltberger died in 1872, and

An engraving from the late 1800s 25

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stories from our souls

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BONAVENTURE CEMETERY control of the Evergreen Cemetery Company passed to a new board of officers. A June 4, 1873, Morning News story related that the cemetery grounds had “been recently improved” and that the company was “now in a self-sustaining condition.

And, although it wasn’t immediately apparent then, brighter days were on the horizon for Bonaventure.

A Sunday attraction In the June 8, 1874, Morning News, it was reported that the Coastal Line Railroad was considering a new route, one that would run from downtown Savannah to Thunderbolt. Both Catholic and Bonaventure cemeteries would be stops on this line, along with Schuetzen Park.

(Started by a local German club, Schuetzen Park was located on the old Greenwich Plantation. An

helped make the trip accessible.

Soon, hundreds were boarding the cars each weekend, going from cemetery to cemetery, and then on to Thunderbolt. Special events, such as the Summer’s Night Festival of the German Volunteers at Schuetzen Park, featured a military parade, prize shooting, dancing and fireworks.

For such occasions, an extra train was set up to leave Bonaventure at midnight.

Establishing its character Probably not directly because of these developments, but undeniably in conjunction with them, the character of the cemetery started to change, to mature. A shadowy Southern necropolis slowly spread out along the banks of the Wilmington River. Vaults, mausoleums,

Soon, hundreds were boarding the cars each weekend, going from cemetery to cemetery... immensely popular attraction, it hosted frequent festivals and boasted such amenities as a bar room, restaurant, coffee stand, ice cream saloon and “segar” stand.)

Less than a year later, that line was opened. Bonaventure, long derided as being too far from the city, was, all of a sudden, just an easy, smooth train ride away.

It took just 20 minutes, according to a May 15, 1875, Morning News article, to roll through the entire route nonstop. For those who wished to get on or off at Bonaventure, a 30-foot-by-40-foot building, with an attached veranda and reception room, had been placed for their convenience near the track. The fares – 30 cents to Thunderbolt and back; 25 cents to Bonaventure and back; and 15 cents to Catholic Cemetery –

tablets, obelisks and statuary, often set apart by intricate iron fences and gates, were carefully crafted and painstakingly positioned under the massive, moody oaks. Azaleas and camellias, along with dogwood, magnolia, pine and palmetto trees, lent a floral softness to the marble and stone.

Savannah grand dame Mary Telfair, who wrote about those “druidical oaks” in 1837, was placed among them when she died in 1875. The last of her line, she was laid in an underground vault beside several other relatives, having moved them from the family’s longtime burial plot at Sharon Plantation on Louisville Road (now U.S. Hwy. 80).

Georgia pioneer Noble Jones, who died in 1775 and was buried at his beloved Wormsloe, 27

BONAVENTURE CEMETERY

and later reburied in a family vault Colonial Park, was brought out to Bonaventure, his final, final, final resting place in 1880. In all, nine family coffins were moved from the old downtown burial ground to Bonaventure on May 18 of that year by George Wymberley Jones De Renne, the great-grandson of Noble Jones.

The burial arguably most associated with Bonaventure, that of 6-year-old Gracie Watson, occurred in 1889. Stricken by pneumonia, the early death of Gracie, the daughter of the manager of the Pulaski House, was noted in the Morning News.

But her passing, while certainly a tragedy, would likely have long since faded from local memory, except for the decision by her grief-stricken father to ask a Savannah sculptor to craft a likeness of her.

Working from a photograph, John Walz produced a poignant, powerful likeness of Little Gracie that was placed in the cemetery in 1890. Drawn by her ethereal beauty and eternal innocence, countless visitors have since gazed on Little Gracie, and made

her otherwise simple plot the most popular spot in the cemetery.

In 1907, with burial space in Laurel Grove Cemetery diminishing, the city bought Bonaventure’s 140 acres for $30,000. Mayor George W. Tiedeman, commenting on the purchase, finally laid the distance controversy to rest. “Ideally located, far enough from the city to insure tranquility, yet easily accessible by electric car or smooth road, Bonaventure affords hallowed ground for the city’s dead for an almost indefinite period,” the mayor reported.

Two years later, the city acquired an additional 20 acres, and dedicated that space for Jewish burials. A Jewish chapel, the only one within a Savannah cemetery and believed to be the only one in any city

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cemetery in the state, was constructed in 1917. In the style of European graveyards, where space is at a premium, the Jewish graves have been placed close together.

With the cemetery’s management and finances securely under the city’s umbrella, Bonaventure entered a long period of serenity and stability. It was a popular stop for tourists, long before the interstate system was built, but it was also especially appealing to Savannah families on Sunday afternoons, particularly back in the day when the city had but two television stations and the internet was beyond imagination.

There were occasional stories in the Morning News about unusual events at the cemetery. In 1958, for instance, the Allied Florists of Savannah, the Park and Tree Commission and the State and Game and Fish Commission formed an alliance against a common enemy – the pesky squirrels who were making meals out of artfully prepared flower arrangements. The effort to lure the squirrels into peanut-baited traps, and

• FROM OUR FILES •

BONAVENTURE ‘HOME’ TO BOTANIST 1,000-MILE TREK IN 1867 RETRACES JOHN MUIR’S WALK

BY WILLIAM WHITTEN STAFF WRITER

Nov. 30, 1975 Just over 100 years ago, American botanist John Muir, 29 years old at the time, walked across Georgia and slept for several nights among the tombs of Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery during a thousand-mile walk from Indiana to the Gulf of Mexico.

His journal of the trek was published in 1916, two years after his death. Under the title, “John Muir’s Longest Walk,” the notes of his trip are again available. This time there are magnificent color photographs by Georgia photographer John Earl to illustrate Muir’s adventures.

Published by Doubleday and Co. of New York this month, the 123 page, large format volume including 70 color pictures and segmented maps, is of special interest to Georgians because of that portion of Muir’s trip in 1867 and Earl’s retracing of it beginning in 1973.

STRANDED IN SAVANNAH Arriving in Savannah on October 8, 1867, Muir was almost broke. Money sent by express to him was a week late in getting to the coastal city.

After spending the first night in “the meanest looking lodging house that I could find,” wrote Muir, “on account of its cheapness” he found the shell road to Bonaventure Cemetery where for the next few days he returned at night to what he called his “graveyard home.”

The most conspicuous glory of Bonaventure is its noble avenue of oaks.

They are the most magnificent planted trees I have ever seen,” he wrote. He described the “thousands of smaller trees and clusters bushes…..half surrounded by the salt marshes and islands” where “many bald eagles roost among the trees.”

CENTER OF LIFE “Large flocks of butterflies, all kinds of happy insects seem to be in a perfect fever of joy and sportive gladness. The whole place seems a center of life,” he commented with a bit of irony, considering it was a cemetery.

When he awoke one morning he “heard the hum of Savannah with the long jarring hallos of negroes far away.”

“Here is where I spent a hungry, weary, yet happy week camping in Bonaventure graveyard 31 years ago. Many changes, I am told, have been made in its graves and avenues of late, and how many in my life.”

--Botanist John Muir, 1898

On rising he found that his head had been resting on a grave. “Through my sleep had not been quite as sound as that of the person below,” he noted.

Each day he returned to Savannah to see if his money had arrived. With less than $1.50, he subsisted by eating cheap bread and “after spending the day looking at the plants in the gardens of the fine residences and town squares” returned at night to Bonaventure.

“One night, as I lay down in my moss nest, I felt some cold blooded creature in it; whether a snake or simply a frog or toad I do not know, but instinctively, instead of drawing back my hand, I grasped the poor creature and threw it over the tops of the bushes. That was the only significant disturbance or fright that I got,” he wrote.

OLD MANSION GONE Earl, who took more than 50,000 pictures from which the book’s 70 were selected, became interested in Muir in 1969 and started photographing Muir’s route backwards from the Gulf in 1973, “so as to follow the Spring north.” In

Bonaventure, Earl noted that while the live oaks are still there, the old mansion mentioned by Muir is gone. He had to photograph the marsh on Ossabaw Island rather than at Bonaventure for he felt “Muir would not (today) recognize the view of the salt marsh….because a bridge and causeway cut the marsh in two.”

ACKNOWLEDGES ASSISTANCE He acknowledges the help in the Savannah area of landscape architect Clermont Lee in preparing the new edition.

Muir revisited the Georgia coast in 1898. From Savannah he wrote, “Here is where I spent a hungry, weary, yet happy week camping in Bonaventure graveyard 31 years ago. Many changes, I am told, have been made in its graves and avenues of late, and how many in my life.”

MUIR HELPED SAVE NATURAL AREAS John Muir is credited with helping save for future generations of Americans many of their most scenic natural areas.

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As a result of his enthusiasm, exploration and writing, Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks were established. His friendship with President Theodore Roosevelt led to the government setting aside 148 million acres for national forest and 16 national monuments, including Muir Woods.

For six years he lived alone in the Yosemite Valley, exploring the area of the Sierra Nevada. He also went to Alaska, where he discovered Glacier Bay, now a national monument, and the huge glacier named for him.

Born in Scotland, he was brought to Wisconsin by his parents at age 11 in 1849. Founder of the Sierra Club in 1892, he died in 1914, disillusioned in his struggles to save the Yosemite-like Hetch Hetchy Valley.

Inset photo: John Muir in 1907 by Francis M. Fritz. Main image: Library of Congress - 1901 photo of Bonaventure Cemetery

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stories from our souls

BONAVENTURE CEMETERY then transport them to other areas, was launched on Feb. 6.

It was not a success. A follow-up story on Feb. 22 said the ruse worked on just one squirrel.

In 1959, cemetery workers made a surprising discovery, a funerary faux pas that involved the vault of Dr. William S. Roberts, the Army doctor who was killed in the Mexican War. Even though the vault was in the center of the cemetery just a short distance from the Tattnall monument, it and several adjoining small lots had simply disappeared from sight.

“Wisteria vines as thick as a man’s wrist,” briars, weeds, and clumps of bushes had grown and twisted together to form an impenetrable barrier, according to an Oct. 11, 1959, story.

A new audience

the Telfair Museums.

Little Gracie fared a little better. But constant attention wore her down as well, and the statue is now protected by an iron fence that was put up in 1999.

As for the cemetery as an entity, it has regained its equilibrium in the 20-or-soyears since the early onslaught of Midnight fame. It still gets plenty of views, though, both in person, and online. A May of 2015 latimes.com article, for instance, places Bonaventure on its list of “10 Cemeteries You’ll Never Regret Visiting.”

“As the ‘Garden’ in the title, it was practically a character in the true-crime story

of a deadly lovers’ quarrel that ruffled Savannah society,” the story states. “And when the tale, which is being adapted for Broadway, appears on stage, you can bet there will be a suitably spooky cemetery set.”

A Google search for “Bonaventure Cemetery” rings up 380,000 results, but the best way to see the grounds, as it has been since 1748, is to slowly walk around, look up and enjoy the ever magnificent oaks and their languid moss draperies.

It’s the ideal way to see what Peter Wiltberger envisioned, what John Walz enhanced, and what John Berendt enriched.

“As the ‘Garden’ in the title, it was practically a character in the true-crime story of a deadly lovers’ quarrel that ruffled Savannah society,” -- L.A. Times, 2015

Local author Polly Powers Stramm, in a Dec. 23, 1991, column in the Morning News, recalled that era. The Sunday afternoon drives and strolls almost always included a stop at Little Gracie’s plot, she said. Shiny pennies were left at the base of the marble statue by generations of Savannah children, a tribute to Gracie and her sad story.

That all changed in January of 1994 with the release of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt’s mega-bestseller. The haunting Jack Leigh image of the Bird Girl, the 4-foot-statue perched on a Bonaventure grave, was on front of the book jacket. It was not just a great photograph – it was the only photograph in the book, other than the standard author mug of Berendt.

The Bird Girl thus brought fans of the book out to Bonaventure in droves. A year or so later, the statue was pulled from its longtime stand. Now, she can be seen at

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; articles in editions of the Savannah Morning News, Savannah Daily Republican, Savannah Daily Georgian, and Savannah Daily News and Herald pulled from savnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu; Georgia Historical Society files; New Georgia Encyclopedia; “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” by John Berendt; “A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf,” by John Muir; “Mary Telfair: The Life and Legacy of a Nineteenth-Century Woman,” by Charles J. Johnson Jr.; “Mary Telfair to Mary Few: Selected Letters 1802-1844,” edited by Betty Wood; “De Renne: Three Generations of a Georgia Family,” by William Harris Bragg; www.bonaventurehistorical.org; www.latimes.com; and National Register of Historic Places Registration Form for Bonaventure Cemetery.

“Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” author John Berendt stands next to the “Bird Girl” statue on display at the Jepson Center for the Arts.

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Their marble masterpieces stand as tributes to their abilities and as touchstones to Savannah’s rich history, but the individual stories of John Walz and Antonio Aliffi, immigrants who carved their way into a city’s heart, are inspiring as well.

Walz, the more acclaimed of the two, was born in Wurtemburg, Germany, in 1844. He first came to the United States at age 13 to live with his sister in Philadelphia after the death of their parents.

While in Philadelphia, he worked in the local stone yards for awhile and went back to Europe to study art and sculpture, a pursuit that took him to Paris, Vienna and other cities.

He traveled to Savannah in 1886 to deliver several statues to the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences. These works of art, which now look out on Telfair Square, were his first contributions to the city that became his adopted home, but far from his last.

In 1890, he created Little Gracie, the small statue of a 6-year-old Savannah girl that sits by itself in a

lot at Bonaventure Cemetery. Her story, death from pneumonia, and Walz’ portrayal, poignant and timeless, has enthralled several generations of visitors, attracted so much attention an iron fence was eventually placed around it, and inspired some truly peculiar productions on YouTube.

Walz is credited with 77 works in Bonaventure alone. Other creations that won much renown include Prince, a dog in Catholic Cemetery, and the Clara Davis monument in Laurel Grove South Cemetery.

Described in one article as a “handsome German, blessed with a tremendous capacity for work,” Walz had two studios in Savannah, the first at 408 Bull St. “Here, in a knee-length smock, he chiseled the huge blocks of stone into works of art that brought admiring crowds.”

In 1907, at age 63, Walz married a Savannah widow, Sarah Bell Gilmore.

They lived at 407 E. Liberty St., and Walz moved his studio next door, at 409 E. Liberty.

The German native did have one hiccup with his Savannah neighbors, a 1917 episode in which they demanded that he destroy a large bust of Bismarck that was on prominent display in his studio. Walz did so the next day.

Walz died on Nov. 27, 1922. Much of the sculptural work on the prominent buildings in Savannah was done

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by Walz, according to his obit the next day in the Morning News. And, though the article did not mention it, he also left another lasting legacy to the city – the contributions of Antonio Aliffi.

Some 44 years younger than Walz, Aliffi was born in Sicily in 1888. He was the son and grandson of sculptors, and came to Savannah, at Walz’ request, in 1910. With his wife Carmela, Aliffi moved into a small house on Wheaton Street, and went to work for Walz.

In the style of that day, many of Aliffi’s early Savannah pieces were signed with Walz’ name. Eventually, Aliffi and Carmela moved to Duffy Street, and he bought his own marble yard in 1920 at 31st and Paulson streets. Several years later, he sold that yard, but business remained good until the Great Depression cracked the market in 1929.

Aliffi then went to work for Milton J. Little of Oglethorpe Monuments, located at Oglethorpe Avenue and East Broad Street. There, he produced delicate hand-carved elements, such

Works by John Walz and Antonio Aliffi

as floral designs and letters. He also worked as a teacher for the Works Progress Administration, earning an additional $59 a month for his family, which now included Carmela and nine children.

One of those children, Grace, was the model for her father’s most famous work, the angel on the Flood monument at Catholic Cemetery. Other Savannah works attributed to Aliffi include the Orsini monument at Bonaventure, the ceiling of the Lucas Theatre and portions of the façade of the Armstrong mansion that overlooks Forsyth Park. He also labored on the carvings on Stone Mountain and Mount Rushmore.

Sadly, that distinguished career came to an early end on Nov. 18, 1936, when Aliffi died at age 48. “Papa’s body of work was large, but it made little money,” said his son, Antonio Aliffi Jr., in a 1998 story in Savannah Magazine. After his death, Carmela had to sell his tools, and other items they brought from Italy, to support the family.

Sources: Georgia Historical Society documents; “Historic Bonaventure Cemetery: Photographs from the Collection of the Georgia Historical Society,” by Amie Marie Wilson and Mandi Dale Johnson; “Men of Iron, Men of Stone, Feet of Clay: A History of Savannah’s Gifted Artisans,” by Elizabeth Pierchocinski; National Register of Historic Places Registration Form for Bonaventure Cemetery.

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The Stranger’s Tomb The “Stranger’s Tomb” was built to honor the memory of Savannah’s “perfect host” William Gaston (d.1837).

In death, he remained the perfect host by providing a temporary resting place in his mausoleum for visitors who die in the city. The structure was moved from Colonial Cemetery to the entrance to Bonaventure in 1873.

Along with the remains of Gaston were two unmarked strangers’ coffins.

Sarah N. Pinckney: Charting our Past by Remembering the Dead A testament to one woman’s devotion to research, the Sarah N. Pinckney cemetery collection at the Georgia Historical Society is a detailed roadmap to burial grounds in Chatham County.

It has separate folders on some 80 cemeteries, alphabetically ranging from Antioch Baptist Church to Zion White Bluff Baptist. Many of the cemeteries, such as Isle of Hope Methodist and Piney Grove Baptist, are affiliated with churches. But others, like Brickyard and Gravel Hill, are not. This overarching study was the starting point for this project.

The folders contain a wide range of information, including typed notes and descriptions, photographs, and newspaper clippings.

The collection includes additional cemetery information, such as a list of Spanish-American War veterans buried in Savannah cemeteries, genealogy research, and files on funeral homes, Confederate soldiers, doctors, hospitals and diseases.

In some cases, the cemeteries were inventoried, and inscriptions listed. Emma Grove Cemetery in the Burroughs Community, for example, contains the gravestone of Fortune Watson, on which is carved “He died in the faith through many dangers,

Victims of the Holocaust Reside in Bonaventure Amid the grace and greenery of Bonaventure Cemetery, there is a singular headstone with a direct tie to the grimmest event in history, the Holocaust, the deliberate, systematic murder of six million Jews.

Located in Section Q, adorned by a simple Star of David, and dotted by small stones representing visitors who have stopped there, this grave marker sits above “ … A third of the ashes of 344 cremated sacred souls, victims of the Nazis …”

In the 1950s, Felix and Manie Budek, who were then living in Savannah, traveled to Germany to bring back the ashes of Manie’s father for a proper burial, said Bill Raffel, who conducted tours at Bonaventure for several years and now helps staff the cemetery’s visitor’s center.

Manie’s father, Schmul Szcerkowski, was an inmate in a labor camp near Hanover, and was killed in March of 1945, about seven weeks before the Germans surrendered, said Raffel. The Nazis were good at keeping records, so the Budeks were able to trace Szcerkowski to the Hanover camp.

But, there was no way to identify Szcerkowski’s body: His ashes, along with those of the other slain Jews, were stored in three separate boxes. Felix and Manie brought one of the three boxes back to Savannah.

After a memorial service conducted by Congregation Agudath Achim, the ashes were placed in Lot 415 of Section Q in the Jewish Burial Section.

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toils and sneers. I have come, ‘Tis grace that brought me safe this far, and grace that leads me home.”

Beyond this collection, Pinckney served as a volunteer for Georgia Historical Society for many years, and its annual Volunteer of the Year Award is named forher. She also was a member of the Bonaventure Historical Society, and in 2000 helped compile a bound index of its markers.

“It does me good to know that we have helped bring some of these forgotten names to light. It’s an effort that should have been done a long time ago,” she said in an Aug. 25, 2000, Savannah Morning News story.

Pinckney found several important graves at Bonaventure, including the one of Bartholomew Zouberbuhler, a minister at Christ Church Episcopal until his death in 1766. She also uncovered and then repaired the marble marker for William Butler, who died in 1761.

“It’s like finding buried treasure,” she said in the 2000 article.

Sources: Georgia Historical Society documents; Savannah Morning News files.

• FROM OUR FILES •

BONAVENTURE MOSS:

BEAUTY AND THREAT

BY KATHY PALMER, EVENING PRESS STAFF WRITER

JAN 26, 1963 The courtship between Bonaventure Cemetery and the Spanish moss that webs the “silent city” has hit a snag.

Felled by winds, the moss has saturated plants along the drives and within cemetery lots and in some places left shrubbery unrecognizable.

A group of Savannahians, alarmed by the encroachment of the moss is spearheading “Operation Clean Sweep.”

Leaders in the movement are Mrs. Henry B. Sayler and Mrs. Howard J. Morrison. Mrs. Sayler, chairman of the Keep Beautiful Savannah Clean committee of the Chamber of Commerce, sounded the opening bell for an extensive cleanup campaign at the cemetery to remove the moss from the azaleas, camellias and other plants.

The Park and Tree Commission, Cemetery Superintendent W. Carl Page and others said this week they welcome all the help they can get in removing the moss.

They declared trying to keep up with the moss invasion with the staff on hand is a “losing battle.”

Mrs. Morrison, general chairman for the project, in a call for volunteers, said dates and times of the massive cleanup job – which will be confined to plant life along the drives – will be announced at a later date. The weather, of course, will play a major factor in times chosen.

Mrs. Sayler said yesterday the Salvation Army, under the direction of Maj. Duane Greet, has “graciously consented” to send its canteen to give “rounds” of coffee to cemetery volunteers during the “clean sweep.”

The chairmen are also appealing to lot owners to manicure their lots and make the project a complete one.

A visit to Bonaventure with the chairmen this week found their fears well grounded. The moss has grasped gray fingers around much of the plant life at the cemetery and is obviously smothering some of the plants affected.

The danger to plant life is, of course, not the only reason for starting the cleanup. Bonaventure has been for many years a showplace of Savannah.

The acreage on the edge of the Wilmington River was first settled about 1760 by Col. John Mulryne, and English gentleman and a Tory, who came here from Charleston, S.C. In 1761, the plantation called Bonaventure came into the possession of the Tattnall family through the marriage of Mary Mulryne to Joseph Tattnall. Gov. Tattnall of Georgia was born there in 1765. It was also during this marriage the famous live oaks were planted and tradition has it in the forms of the letters M and T for the two families.

In 1847 the land was purchased by Capt. P. Wittberger who originated the idea of devoting Bonaventure to its present use. He is buried there. His son Major W.H. Wittberger carried through his father’s desire and Bonaventure became a cemetery in 1850. It was called Evergreen Cemetery of Bonaventure until the Park and Tree Commission assumed supervision and control.

Many monuments in Bonaventure bear the proudest names in Georgia history – Noble Jones of Wormsloe and his son, Dr. Nobles Wimberly Jones, Edward Telfair, William B. Hodgson, Patrick Houston, and Lady Houston, Brig. Gen. Henry B. Jackson, Gen. Duncan Clinch and numerous others.

One of the most touching resting places in Bonaventure is the grave of a little girl – Gracie – who died in 1889.

The lovely, life-sized status of the child with the sweet smile upon her lips has become a shrine at the cemetery and draws hundreds to her resting place each year.

The money left in a jar on her grave is used to keep the lot looking as beautiful as Gracie.

The shrine was pointed out by Mrs. Morrison and Mrs. Sayler this week as a model for all cemetery lots.

Both Savannah ladies are quick to agree that Spanish moss is spelled with two capital “T’s” Tradition and Tourism.

But they are also determined that the time has come for the lovely grey attraction to be put back in its place – in the trees.

CLEANUP REPORTED SUCCESSFUL FEB. 11, 1963

Operation Clean Sweep at Bonaventure Cemetery over the weekend was called “a tremendous success” this morning by a leader in the effort to remove the Spanish moss from plants at the historic cemetery.

Mrs. Henry B. Sayler, chairman of the Keep Beautiful Savannah Clean Committee of the Chamber of Commerce, said more than 550 cars with volunteers showed up Saturday and Sunday to help in the beautification project.

She said, “thanks to these hard working citizens the cemetery will have flowers this year.”

Mrs. Sayler, who with Mrs. Howard J. Morrison spearheaded the clearing of the moss from the main drives, declared she “never saw anything like it,” as the volunteers poured into the cemetery, even in the cold drizzle Saturday.

Numerous Boy Scouts and the canteen of the Salvation Army were on hand to boost the project with work and free coffee.

Mrs. Sayler said she had to turn down numerous offerings of donations.

“This was not a money-making project,” she said.

“The cemetery looks wonderful,” the chairman said, “now it’s up to lot owners to continue to keep their property cleared and help with the moss cleanup on the drives.”

Mrs. Sayler said the second phase of “Operation Clean sweep” will be announced at a later date.

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Top 10 Spots to Visit at Bonaventure Cemetery

Hugh W. Mercer (1808-1877) The famed Mercer House on Monterey Square was built for this Mercer, a Confederate general and the great-grandfather of Johnny Mercer.

Mary Telfair (1791-1875) The daughter of prominent early Georgia Gov. Edward Telfair, who is also buried in the plot, Mary Telfair inherited great wealth and never married. She stipulated in her will, which was contested to the U.S. Supreme Court, that her house was to become a museum. It is now the oldest public art museum in the South. Another provision funded the Telfair Hospital for Females.

Dr. Richard Arnold (1808-1876)

Johnny Mercer (1909-1976) This Savannah native won four Academy Awards for songwriting. The marble bench at his plot is decorated with the names of some of his most memorable tunes, including “Blues in the Night,” “The Days of Wine and Roses,” “That Old Black Magic,” and “Moon River,” an homage to his heritage.

One of the most accomplished men in Savannah history, Arnold vaccinated more than 620 people during an 1830 smallpox epidemic. He was one of the organizers and professors of the Savannah Poorhouse and Hospital, played a prominent role in the Medical Association of Georgia and was one of the charter members of the American Medical Association. He served five one-year terms as mayor. In the final one, in 1864, he surrendered the city to Union forces, saving it from destruction.

Peter Wiltberger

Noble Jones (1701-1775 ) and Noble Wimberly Jones

(1791-1853) Wiltberger built the Pulaski Hotel, a Johnson Square landmark for more than a century, and in 1846 bought the 600-acre Bonaventure Plantation and set aside 70 acres of it to fashion a cemetery.

(c. 1723-1805) They came over from England with Gen. James E. Oglethorpe in 1733, and settled what eventually became Wormsloe Plantation on Isle of Hope. They split, however, on the issue of American independence. Noble Jones remained loyal to the crown: His son, Noble Wimberly, was so heavily involved in the Patriot cause that he earned the nickname the “Morning Star of Liberty.” Their remains were moved to Bonaventure in 1880.

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Walz Garden A project of the Bonaventure Historical Society, it’s landscaped with Victorian-era plants and flowers, including magnolias, roses and violets.

Conrad Aiken (1889-1973) (ABOVE) Born in Savannah, he went on to an extraordinary career in letters, winning a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for poetry and befriending many international figures. Aiken, who would often visit his parents’ graves (their deaths were a murder-suicide) when he was a boy, put up a bench at his plot so people could sit and enjoy the setting.

Little Gracie (1883-1889)

American Legion Field and Spanish-American War Section

(RIGHT) Her tragic death of pneumonia at age 6 halted her life, but Savannah sculptor John Walz ensured Gracie would never be forgotten with his lifelike marble portrayal that was unveiled in 1890. Generations have made since the pilgrimage to her plot. In earlier years, school children would leave pennies next to her feet, now she’s protected by an imposing iron fence.

Amid the elegant statuary of Bonaventure, these simple headstones offer an eloquent tribute to the enduring heroism of American soldiers.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society.

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Map of Bonaventure Cemetery, Estate of Maj. W.M. Wiltberger, 1893 copy of 1877 original

Source: City of Savannah Archives 39

catholic cemetery

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Consecrated in Good Faith The letter from Bishop Francis X. Gartland was clear: A Catholic section of still unopened Laurel Grove Cemetery had to be consecrated and set aside solely for Catholics. The decision by the Savannah City Council was equally clear: By a 6-3 vote, it turned down those conditions.

This uncomfortable episode in 1853 was just one of many confrontations that arose out of the city’s efforts to solve its cemetery crisis. It was also the decision that led directly to the establishment of Catholic Cemetery.

Catholics had conducted burials in Colonial Park, primarily in its southwest section, for generations.

That section was often referred to as Cathedral Cemetery, because the Cathedral at that time was only a few blocks away, at the intersection of Perry and Drayton streets.

But, Colonial Park had become extremely overcrowded, and was on the verge of closing.

In his letter published in the July 2, 1853, Daily Morning News, Gartland was quite specific. The city must pledge its “good faith” that land dedicated for Catholic burials could never otherwise “be appropriated.”

Plus, the local Catholic clergy would be the sole authority in each instance of determining burial eligibility.

Only if those conditions were met, said the bishop, would he consecrate a Catholic section at Laurel Grove.

Gartland added that he had another option, 15 acres on White Bluff Road: “But the fear that, in the course of time, it may be encroached upon by the extension of the city, induces me, humiliating though it may be, to turn my eyes again to Laurel Grove, notwithstanding what has already transpired in reference to this matter.”

The council, in voting down the proposal, did so with no comment, at least in the newspaper.

Undaunted, Gartland came up with a quick solution. The new Catholic Cemetery, which was known as the Cemetery of St. Vincent de Paul for a time, opened just a month or so later, on Aug. 2, 1853, on an 8 1/3-acre plot on the Thunderbolt Road, purchased from the Rhinehart Plantation for $833.

The first person buried there was Catherine Finney, who was laid to rest on Aug. 23, 1853. Old records state that she was “brought dead from Cockspur Island.” But, many markers in the cemetery are older than hers. Those were first placed in Colonial Park and later transferred, along with 200 or so remains, to the Catholic cemetery.

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Tragically, just over a year later, Bishop Gartland was buried there as well. He died heroically on Sept.

20, 1854, stricken by yellow fever as he nursed victims of an epidemic.

Bishop Edward Barron, the VicarGeneral of Philadelphia, was fatally stricken during that time as well. He had come to Savannah to help his friend Gartland. They were interred in the priests’ lot.

During the Civil War, both Confederate and Union officers recognized the strategic location of the cemetery. The Confederates put up Fort Brown, an earthen fortification with 11 field and siege guns to protect the eastside route into the city, but did so without encroaching upon the cemetery.

The North, even in the absence of a legitimate Southern threat, put up much larger earthworks, and ran them right through the cemetery, desecrating many graves. The remains of two bishops, two priests and four nuns were reburied in the convent garden. The cemetery was reconsecrated on Christmas Eve of 1867, and the bishops, priests and nuns reburied.

Today, there is still a formidable Confederate presence on the grounds. Local historian Elizabeth Piechocinski has estimated that

CATHOLIC CEMETERY

the cemetery holds some 630 men who fought for that cause. Many of them served with the Irish Jasper Greens, a Savannah militia unit that dates back to 1842, and many of them were veterans when they died.

Two separate monuments stand in the cemetery in honor of these men. The first was dedicated by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1904. The second, a statue dedicated in 1910, is believed to stand on the ground where the men killed in action are buried.

Other dedicated lots of the cemetery, which now covers some 26 acres, include those assigned to the Little Sisters of the Poor and the Saint Patrick’s Total Abstinence and Benevolent Society.

The Sisters, who ministered to the indigent, served the Diocese of Savannah for some 75 years, until 1971, when the order left town. The St. Patrick’s Society was formed in 1868, and promoted the cause of total abstinence until 1890.

The Sisters of Mercy, the Workingmen’s Benevolent Association, Missionary Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, Sisters of Saint Joseph of Carondolet have lots as well, as do lay organizations

Many of the buried Confederate Soldiers served with the Irish Jasper Greens, a Savannah militia unit that dates back to 1842, and many of them were veterans when they died. such as the Italian Society, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, Saint Mary’s Home, the Irish Union Society and the Saint Patrick Society.

Mother Matilda Beasley, who established the St. Francis Home for Colored Orphans in 1887 and founded the first order of African-American nuns in the country, was buried in Catholic Cemetery in 1903.

Several of the statues of Savannah’s best-known sculptors, John Walz and Antonio Aliffi, illuminate the lanes of Catholic Cemetery. A native of Italy, Aliffi placed a detailed, delicate angel atop the Flood plot.

The model for the work was his daughter, Grace.

Walz, whose work can be found throughout the city, carved a lifelike-looking dog named Prince for one of the plots.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society papers; Diocese of Savannah documents; “Men of Iron, Men of Stone, Feet of Clay: A History of Savannah’s Gifted Artisans,” by Elizabeth Piechocinski; “Rebel Bishop: Augustin Verot, Florida’s Civil War Prelate,” by Michael Gannon, “Savannah’s Catholic Cemetery, Chatham County, Georgia,” Vol. 1, The Old Section, by the Catholic Diocese of Savannah.

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stories from our souls

“I have always enjoyed cemeteries.

Altars for the living as well as resting places for the dead, they are entryways, I think, to any town or city, the best places to become acquainted with the tastes of the inhabitants, both present and gone.� ― Edwidge Danticat, novelist

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“I have always enjoyed cemeteries.

Altars for the living as well as resting places for the dead, they are entryways, I think, to any town or city, the best places to become acquainted with the tastes of the inhabitants, both present and gone.� ― Edwidge Danticat, novelist

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• FROM OUR FILES •

THE STONES WILL ALL BOW DOWN FOR BELOVED IRISHMAN

BILL CANTY 1903-2002

BY POLLY POWERS STRAMM

TUESDAY, NOV. 19, 2002 If there ever were a real-life leprechaun it had to have been Irishman Bill Canty, who died Monday morning just five days before his 99th birthday.

“Billy brought sunshine wherever he went,” said long-time friend Jack Pierce. “He was always so pleasant and very gregarious. When you asked him how he was doing he’d always say, “I don’t have an ache or a pain or a wrinkle.”

In his later years Canty would take long walks and greet women with a broad grin in hearty laugh. In an accent that was part Irish brogue and part old Savannah, Canty would tap his hat and bellow, “Hello dahlin.”

For the last year Canty had been a resident of Care for All Ages, where he had moved after a November 2001 fall in his apartment at Rose of Sharon. The tumble that injured his back “really was the beginning of the

end,” said his niece, Mary Elizabeth Canty.

The likeable Irishman was well known for his volunteer work at the Catholic Cemetery where he will be laid to rest Thursday at 10 a.m. For many years he would ride the bus twice a week to the cemetery where he would tend to his favorite hobby – sprucing up the burial lots and cleaning tombstones.

In a 1989 story in the Savannah Evening Press Canty said when it was time for him to go and the hearse took him to the cemetery, “the stones would all bow down” to the little Irishman who kept them sparkling clean.

Dr. Frank Rizza was a good friend and Savannah native who lived in New Orleans until a few years ago.

“He told me that as a child he loved to go to the cemetery,” Rizza said.

“He knew the cemetery better than anybody and could tell you all kinds of stories about the people buried there.”

Rizza said Canty was “especially faithful” to his family’s burial lot during the years that Rizza was in New Orleans. “The beauty of what he did was that if he saw a tombstone that needed to be cleaned he would do it whether he knew the family or not.”

In a 1982 interview in the Savannah Evening Press, Canty said he started going to the cemetery

when he was 10. The cemetery trips coupled with front porch talks with his mother taught him about everybody’s family background, he said.

As a child Canty even went so far as to play hooky from school to visit the cemetery. When his mother found out what he was up to she would “tan my hide with a cat ‘o nine tails,’ he said.

One of his favorite statues was a marble angel on the grave of Mollie McDonald, who died in 1905.

Sometimes on St. Patrick’s Day, Canty would go to the cemetery and place Irish flags on the graves of 11 nuns who, years ago, came from Ireland to teach school in Savannah.

His Irish heritage and family were extremely important to Canty.

He was one of 10 children born to John Francis Canty and Elizabeth Fitzgerald, who came to Savannah from Listowel County Kerry Ireland.

He attended the Marist School and graduated from Benedictine Military School in 1923. At the time of his death he was the oldest BC graduate.

For many years the Canty family lived in a grand old home near the intersection of Henry and Abercorn streets. A lifetime bachelor, Canty once had a girlfriend who became a religious sister. His mother would tell him “she was marked by God for the convent,” Canty said.

In later years, after their parents died, Canty and his brother Joe, who also never married, lived at the Henry Street house where they cared for their maiden aunt Maggie Fitzgerald.

After Joe Canty and Aunt Maggie died, Bill Canty sold the home and moved into Lester Hayman Funeral Home. Canty had retired from the railroad and helped out at the funeral home by moving flowers and serving as doorman.

Several years ago he moved to Rose of Sharon.

Mary Elizabeth Canty described her uncle as “larger than life.”

Added Jack Pierce: “We won’t see the likes of him Billy anymore.”

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O BI T UA RY Savannah Morning News, November 20, 2002

WILLIAM IGNATIUS CANTY William Ignatius Canty, 98, of Savannah died Monday, November 18, 2002, at the Care for All Ages Assisted Living, under the care of Hospice Savannah.

He was born in Savannah, attended St. Patrick’s Elementary School, and was the oldest living graduate of the class of 1923, Benedictine Military School. He attended Belmont Abbey College, Belmont, N.C. He was a Communicant of Sacred Heart Catholic Church.

He was a retired employee of the Central of Georgia Railroad, serving in the Southeastern Demurrage Bureau.

Mr. Canty had a wealth of knowledge of “who’s who in Savannah.” He was known for his keen wit and his big heart. He was best known for his love and devotion to the Catholic Cemetery. He would go early in the morning and stay until late afternoon, taking care of many family plots, even of families whom he did not know. He was preceded in death by his parents, John F. Canty, Sr., and Elizabeth Fitzgerald Canty, and nine siblings.

Survivors: two nephews, Father Richard J. Canty of Savannah and Dr. Edward A. Brennan Jr., of Sea Girt, NJ; two nieces, Mrs. Margie Canty Murphy of Savannah and Mary Elizabeth Canty of Tybee Island; two cousins, Mrs. Bert Buckley Schlosser of Savannah and Mrs. Peggy Buckley Cribbs of Fort Pierce, FL. Memorial Service: 10 a.m. Thursday in the Catholic Cemetery, with Father Richard J. Canty officiating.

Remembrances: Hospice Savannah, 1352 Eisenhower Drive, Savannah, GA 31406 Hubert C. Baker Funeral Home 7415 Hodgson Memorial Drive Savannah

Couple’s Grave Markers Greet Airplanes Each Day Casimir Pulaski Revolutionary War Hero May or May not be Buried in Savannah Gen. Casimir Pulaski, the gallant Polish cavalry leader whose sacrifice to the American cause in the Revolutionary War was immortalized in a 54-foot-high statue that has graced the center of Monterey Square since 1854.

Pulaski was mortally wounded on Oct. 9, 1779, during the Siege of Savannah. He and his cavalry unit, the Pulaski Legion, were part of a dramatic but failed final attack on the British lines. The Pole, who had joined Gen. George Washington’s army in 1777, died two days later.

In 1825, when the Marquis de Lafayette visited Savannah, he dedicated the cornerstone to a monument in Johnson Square that memorialized both Pulaski and Gen. Nathanael Greene. The city had planned to build separate monuments to the two heralded soldiers, but could not afford to do so at that time.

That changed in 1852, when the lottery commission finally had enough funds to contract for the Pulaski Monument. Carved in Italy from Carrara marble by sculptor Robert E. Launitz, the statue was shipped to Savannah in 34 separate pieces and then reassembled on a granite base.

The fatal wounding of the general is depicted in one of the monument’s panels.

In the 1990s, the city disassembled the monument for repairs and renovations. A metal box found in the monument’s base was purported to contain Pulaski’s remains, but DNA tests proved inconclusive.

The monument was reassembled in December of 2000. One of the sections of marble was placed upside down, just as it had been had been in 1854.

On Oct. 9, 2005, the 226th anniversary of the climactic battle of the Siege of Savannah, the remains found underneath the monument were reburied in Monterey Square with full military honors. Three Polish veterans, who had served in the Polish cavalry during World War II, were part of the procession that marched the remains to the square.

The story of Gen. Gen. Casimir Pulaski has resounded with Americans for generations, and tributes to him are common in the United States.

Here in Savannah, in addition to the monument in Monterey Square, there is Pulaski Square, Pulaski Ward, Pulaski Elementary School and Fort Pulaski, a National Monument on Cockspur Island.

In Georgia, there is a Pulaski County, one of seven named for the general. The others are in Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Virginia. Towns in Tennessee and Iowa were also named for him.

Another statue to him sits on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., and the USS Casimir Pulaski, a ballistic missile submarine, was part of the U.S. Navy from 1964 until 1994.

And there are at least two bridges named for Pulaski, one in New York, the other in New Jersey.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; New Georgia Encyclopedia; www.internationalchimney.com (the company that repaired the monument); City of Savannah Tour Guide Manual; www.liveoakpl.org.

Grave:

Runway:

an excavation made in the earth in which to bury a dead body. a paved or cleared strip on which planes land and take off.

It seems pretty much impossible that these two nouns could ever intersect, but that’s exactly what pilots and passengers witness daily at Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport.

The graves came first. Richard and Catherine Dotson were both born in 1797, were married for 50 years, and were buried in the family cemetery of their plantation, located in the Cherokee Hill section of west Chatham County.

For Catherine, who died in 1877, “gone home to rest,” was carved into her marker. For Richard, who died in 1884, “at rest” was inscribed on his marker. And they did rest peacefully in a quiet, rural setting, along with some 100 or so deceased relatives and slaves, until World War II began.

Then, the search for an alternative to already busy Hunter Field brought the Army to Cherokee Hill, and construction on what would become Chatham Field displaced the Dotson Cemetery. The family sold a large portion of its land to the government, and most of the bodies in the family cemetery were reinterred, at 47

federal expense, in Bonaventure. But the family asked that the grave markers to Richard and Catherine, along with memorial stones to Daniel Hueston and John Dotson, remain.

The land, they pointed out, had been in the Dotson family since a royal grant was issued in the 18th century. With a war going on, the government made the necessary arrangements: The stones were laid flat, and even with the concrete that soon surrounded them.

In the years since, Chatham Field has become Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport, and the Dotson markers, which are situated near the runway shoulder, have become a unique, although difficult to visit, feature.

Sources: dictionary.com; Georgia Historical Society documents; Savannah Morning News files.

laurel grove north cemetery

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Leaving the City for a Quiet Repose “We seek, beyond city limits, fit burial places for our dead,” Savannah lawyer, statesman and soldier Henry R. Jackson declared at the Nov. 10, 1852, dedication of Laurel Grove Cemetery.

It was time, Jackson emphasized, to “abandon the old practice of burying the dead in the heart of cities, in narrow ground, where generations are heaped upon generations.”

And, though such sentiments were certainly in keeping with the rural cemetery movement then growing in popularity, Jackson’s call was grounded in practical, rather than philosophical, reasons.

Colonial Park Cemetery, Savannah’s principal burying ground since 1750, was bursting at its brick-wall seams.

“No new grave could be opened without exhuming the relics of some fellow-being who had previously been interred on the same spot,” Jackson said. Laurel Grove, he added, was the answer to that dilemma: “Situated on high ground, and bounded on its southwestern border by low ground covered with native forest, (Laurel Grove) has all the elements of being made a picturesque and beautiful spot.”

The 100-acre cemetery site was part of a much larger property, Springfield Plantation. Purchased by

Joseph Stiles in 1806, Springfield covered some 960 acres and was, for a time, a prime rice plantation.

However, an 1818 requirement to eliminate flooded rice fields close to the city limits ended its profitability, and in 1850, Stiles’ heirs sold it to the city for $29 an acre, a total of $27,840.

On June 7, 1851, Savannah City Council voted to name the new cemetery Laurel Grove, a tribute to the native laurel oak trees that once stood on the site. Shortly after that, a cadre of workers descended on the once quiet fields. “Wood! Wood!!

Wood!!!” blared an ad in the Oct. 13, 1851, edition of the Savannah Daily Republican. “Five hundred cords of pine wood for sale, suitable for burning bricks. The wood will be cut to suit purchasers, from one cord to 500.” Six months later, in March of 1852, the same ad was still running.

As the old plantation was cleared, the landscape plan of James O. Morse was implemented. A northern engineer in town to assist with the new waterworks, Morse was

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awarded $100 for submitting the best proposal. Master gardener William George was employed to supervise the project, and the Ogeechee Plank Road Company was hired to put down a plank road from the city to the cemetery.

The first public auction of lots, as provided by the city ordinance governing Laurel Grove, took place on Sept. 21, 1852. Shortly after that, the first burials took place, even though the cemetery had not been officially opened or dedicated.

On Oct. 13, 1852, 13-year-old Maria Louisa Smith was laid to rest in Lot 575. Years later, one of her Chatham Academy classmates recalled that Maria’s funeral procession passed the school on its way to Laurel Grove. Much less fanfare accompanied the first AfricanAmerican burials. Jane, described as being 37 years old, and her child, were interred on Oct. 24, 1852, each victims of fever. (Traditionally, white people were buried in the northern section of the cemetery and African-Americans in the southern

LAUREL GROVE NORTH portion. The two burial grounds were physically split by the construction of the 37th Street connector to Interstate 16 in the mid-1960s.)

On July 1, 1853, the mayor and council finally closed Colonial Park, Potter’s Field, and the Negro Cemetery to burials. The 1854 city ordinance for cemeteries specified that 15 acres of Laurel Grove were to be used “alone for the internment of the remains of deceased persons of color.”

And furthermore, four acres, “more or less,” were to be “set apart for the special use of the members of the Hebrew congregation for cemetery purposes.”

The opening of the new cemetery soon proved to be providential. In the summer and fall of 1854, a yellow fever epidemic ravaged the city, claiming some 560 lives On one day, Tuesday, Sept. 12, 1854, there were 51 burials in the city, 35 at Laurel Grove.

Some 10 years later, disaster of a different sort struck.

During the Civil War, both Confederate and Union forces dug deep trenches and cut down rows of trees at Laurel Grove, damage that took decades to repair and grow over.

Two prominent Confederate officers – one killed at the onset of the war, the other at the very end of it – are among the 1,500 or so Southern soldiers buried at Laurel Grove.

Francis S. Bartow, a Savannah attorney, ardent champion of secession, and colonel of the 8th Georgia Infantry Regiment, was killed at the Battle of First Bull Run on July 21, 1861. An early, prominent casualty of the conflict, his passing drew national attention. On Aug. 6, 1861, the New York Times printed a dispatch of the Charleston Mercury, reporting that “the entire population” of Savannah was present at the funeral. “The bells were tolled and minute guns were fired during the march of the column. A salute of three rounds was fired by the infantry and artillery over the grave.”

No such ceremony marked the death or funeral of Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar, though, like Bartow, he was a figure of national prominence. The scion of a wealthy Savannah family, he was the owner of The Wanderer, a luxury racing yacht he converted into a slave ship. In November of 1858, the ship completed a long voyage, tied up at Jekyll Island, and unloaded its cargo, some 400 Africans. Lamar was arrested and tried on federal charges in Savannah, a widely followed drama that was presided over by another man who rests in Laurel Grove, U.S. Supreme Court Justice James Moore Wayne.

When war came, Lamar quickly joined the Confederate forces. He served through the war, and was killed in April of 1865, several days after General Robert E. Lee’s surrender, in a battle near Columbus, Ga. His body was eventually brought back to Savannah, and he was quietly buried in Laurel Grove on June 3, 1866.

Other Confederates in Laurel Grove North include generals Lafayette McLaws, Moxley Sorrel, Henry C. Wayne, Edward Willis, Jeremy Gilmer, Peter McClashan and George Harrison. The bodies of some 760 Confederates who died in 1863 at Gettysburg were bought to Savannah after the war and reburied in eight mass graves in Laurel Grove North.

Now known as Gettysburg Field, that part of the cemetery 50

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LAUREL GROVE NORTH

used to be called the Soldiers’ Lot, and it was a popular destination on Confederate Memorial Day. “Numerous as have been the visitors to the chief cemetery of the city on previous Memorial Days, the concourse that crowded its winding avenues and moved beneath the arching branches of its leafy trees was yesterday more numerous still,” according to the April 27, 1875, edition of the Savannah Morning News. “It was impossible for all who made the effort to succeed in securing a ride on the street cars that now run to the cemetery gate, and many were forced to walk across the grassy commons to Laurel Grove.”

That was during the Victorian Era, Laurel Grove North’s halcyon period. Its wide avenues were gradually, gorgeously decorated with elaborate, expensive mausoleums, monuments, ironwork and sculpture. The internment rights to all its lots were sold during that time. Thus, it likely has the largest collection of Victorian-era cemetery architecture and artifacts in the Southeast The Gothic-designed, marble-made Lawton Vault resembles a cathedral, with steeples on the corner and dentil work along the roof. And it, like many other plots, is bordered by sturdy ironwork. The Indian Street Foundry produced much of the early ironwork in Laurel Grove North.

Savannah sculptor John Walz, whose Bonaventure work won wide acclaim, also fashioned statues for Laurel Grove, including a soulful 1901 portrayal of a grieving woman at the grave of Henry Heuisler. The angel at the tomb of Louisa Porter, one of Laurel Grove North’s most ethereal creations, was carved of Carrara marble by Italian craftsman A. Caniparoli.

As the 19th century passed, small cemetery neighborhoods, often delineated by nationality, were set up, and organizations, such as the Knights of Pythias and Masonic orders, purchased plots for their members.

Laurel Grove, in those days, was an outdoor drawing room, a place where Victorians gathered to socialize. “They would ride through the open fields in their carriages, pull over, visit with friends and picnic. I guess it was the old-fashioned way to cruise,” said local historian Hugh Golson in a 1994 Savannah Morning News article.

“The Victorians weren’t afraid of death,”

Golson added. “They made an event out of it instead of trying to put it behind them as soon as they can, like we do.”

On Nov. 10, 1927, the 75th anniversary of the dedication ceremony, the Savannah Evening Press published a long, laudatory article about Laurel Grove. Some 86,765 people – 59,900 African-Americans and 29,865 whites – “sleep beneath its oaks,” wrote John L. Sutlive.

But, by that time, ruffles of discontent had begun to disturb its pastoral peace.

John Walker Guss, writing in his book “Savannah’s Laurel Grove Cemetery,” said citizens were lodging complaints in the 1920s about a lack of maintenance in the cemetery. The city, on its side, responded that the families and groups were not paying for perpetual care.

The clip files of the Savannah Morning News contain several stories about the situation, including a 1952 charge from a former Savannah resident that the cemetery had become a “blot” on the city. “Laurel Grove today is a terrible place. The undergrowth has almost taken over the cemetery,” Andrew W. Kops said in a letter to the superintendent of the Park and Tree Commission.

Other stories warned fishermen to stop digging for bait in the cemetery, and recorded complaints that hunters were shooting squirrels in Laurel Grove North and Laurel Grove South.

“Once the pride of Savannah,” Laurel Grove North “has deteriorated since World War II,” the National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form for Laurel Grove North stated in 1983. Several causes were listed, including that fact that most of the lots had been filled, that a decorative pond had dried up and become overgrown, and that it was now bordered by an interstate highway.

Many funerary artifacts have been lost or damaged through vandalism, theft or natural decay, the report added.

After that, several initiatives were made an effort to stabilize the cemetery. Golson launched the Society for the Preservation of Laurel Grove Inc. in 1993. The first plot he worked on was that of James Moore Wayne, a distant uncle and one of perhaps 70 relatives he has in the cemetery.

The justice’s grave was caved in, Golson recalled. “It wasn’t respectful to see him like that. I felt like I had to bring dignity 53

back to the family.”

In 1995, the society battled a new problem in the old cemetery – the theft of thousands of Victorian garden tiles. Made of baked clay, they delineated many of the graves in the cemetery, and were being pulled up and sold at antique stores and flea markets.

Today, the 67 acres of Laurel Grove North are maintained by the City of Savannah’s Department of Cemeteries.

With its timeless mossy oak trees lining the lanes, and colorful azaleas growing alongside, and sometimes even amid the

worn and time-patinaed iron fences, it has a slightly shabby but still elegant character, much like a noble family that has fallen on hard times.

And, it remains a popular destination, particularly for Girl Scouts making the pilgrimage to the grave of Juliette Gordon Low, and Confederate descendants looking for a place where old times are not forgotten.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Savannah Daily Republican and Savannah Daily Morning News articles pulled from savnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu; Georgia Historical Society papers and publications; New Georgia Encyclopedia; National Register of Historic Places Nomination Forms for Laurel Grove North and Laurel Grove South cemeteries; “Savannah: A History of Her People Since 1733,” by Dr. Preston Russell and Barbara Hines; “Savannah’s Laurel Grove Cemetery,” by John Walker Guss; www.nytimes.com; www. savannahga.gov; and “Charles Augustus Lafayette Lamar: Southern Gentleman and Owner of the Slave Ship Wanderer,” by Ana Lee Prieto, part of the Savannah Biographies held at the Special Collections of Lane Library of Armstrong State University.

Top 10 Spots to Visit at Laurel Grove North Cemetery

Alfred Torlay (1819-1888) The cemetery’s first keeper, Torley is buried in Lot 576, along with each of his three wives.

Florence Martus The Waving Girl (1868-1943) Living on Elba Island with her brother, who was the lighthouse keeper, Martus waved her a handkerchief or lantern at each ship that passed, coming or going, day or night, from 1887 until 1931.

Lafayette McLaws (1821-1897) A native of Augusta and a graduate of West Point, McLaws fought for the South during the Civil War, reaching the rank of major general. After the war, he settled in Savannah and served as collector of revenue for the First District and as postmaster from 1876 until 1884.

Gen. Frank O’Driscoll Hunter

Habersham Brothers Young Confederate soldiers William Neyle Habersham and Joseph Clay Habersham died on the same day, July 21, 1864, during the battle for Atlanta. The obelisk over their bodies reads, “In their death, they were not divided.”

Baby Land

(1894-1982) Born in Savannah before the invention of airplanes, Hunter quickly became one of the harbingers of the new age. He was an ace in World War I, served as an Army test pilot between the wars, and was one of the top generals of the Eighth Air Force during World War II. Hunter Army Airfield is named for him.

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Some 160 babies who died during childbirth are interred in this section on the western edge of the cemetery.

The Sailors’ Plot Marked in 1953 by a massive ship anchor imbedded in concrete, it was purchased in 1860 by John Cunningham as a burial ground for seafarers who die in the Port of Savannah. Captains and seamen from many countries are interred there.

James Moore Wayne (1790-1867) He served as mayor of Savannah and in the U.S. House of Representatives before being appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Andrew Jackson. He remained on the court throughout the Civil War.

James Lord Pierpont The composer of “Jingle Bells”: (1822-1893) A native of New England, he lived in Savannah in the 1850s and served as the organist and music director of the city’s Unitarian congregation. He died in Florida, and was buried there, but his remains were later moved to the Laurel Grove plot of the family of his second wife, Eliza J. Purse.

Juliette Gordon Low (1860-1927) Born into a prominent Savannah family, the founder of the Girl Scouts was buried in her Scouts uniform. Her grave has become a shrine for the thousands of Girl Scouts who visit the city on an annual basis.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society; www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas. com; “Savannah’s Laurel Grove Cemetery,” by John Walker Guss

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Map of Laurel Grove Cemetery and Surroundings 1934 Works Progress Administration Map

Source: City of Savannah Archives 57

laurel grove south cemetery

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“A Precious Treasure that Bears Witness”

By Vaughnette Goode-Walker

“A resolution was passed authorizing the City Marshal to have the vaults of the old negro cemetery South of the hospital, together with their contents, removed at the expense of the city, to the new Negro cemetery; provided the relatives or friends of the deceased persons in the vaults, select ground for that purpose.”

From the Savannah Daily Morning News – February 23, 1855

Laurel Grove South Cemetery is “sacred ground” and a lesson in Savannah’s rich black history. The land used today for the cemetery started out as rice fields on the Springfield plantation where enslaved Africans worked in the 1700s.

In 1853, a hundred years after the institution of slavery was legalized in Georgia, five acres of the land was purchased by the city and set aside for the “burial ground” for enslaved Africans and free people.

Then in 1855, the headstones were moved and remains were reinterred from another “negro” cemetery on East side of the city, which was located around what is today Whitefield Square. In 1857, another additional 11 acres was added to what is today Laurel Grove South Cemetery.

The Facts Laurel Grove South is laid out in a grid pattern and First Avenue, Fourth Avenue, George Street, and Booker Street bound the oldest section. A row

of stones, which appear to be growing out of the oak tree, mark the mass reinterment of slave graves.

The most common grave marker found in Laurel Grove South Cemetery is a small stone tablet, slightly rounded at the top. The markers are decorated with an occasional wreath motif or cross embellishment.

In some areas, at Laurel Grove South Cemetery, there are several tombstones with a lance shape that range from undecorated tablets to the more elaborate one of Jane Deveaux.

She was a free black and a teacher in Savannah’s “Secret Schools” during slavery. Deveaux died in 1883 and she and her family were members of the Second African Baptist Church.

Along Avenue A, which used to be entrance to the Cemetery, is the grave of John Davis. His gravesite has stonework designed by John Walz, who is well known for his work in Bonaventure Cemetery.

The grave of “Old Tom,”as he was called, is one of the seven graves in Laurel Grove South Cemetery with a

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Confederate cross. Tom went to the Civil War with his owner, Capt. John Wheaton, who later became Mayor of Savannah.

The twentieth century grave markers are common granite monuments to mix in with concrete markers enslaved people poured on the ground into which have been pressed the name and dates of the deceased.

The African tradition of placing objects on the graves that the deceased would have used in life is still seen, to some degree, at Laurel Grove South Cemetery. The individual’s economic status in the black community is also reflected by type of tombstones that adorn the gravesites.

Mausoleums and Monoliths Not many mausoleums stand in Laurel Grove South and the ones there are either rectangular brick structures or rectangular white stucco structures with tablets recessed into the front.

stories from our souls

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LAUREL GROVE SOUTH

The most impressive monolith grave marker in Laurel Grove is the hexagonal white stone monolith, which marks the grave of Rev. Ulysses L. Houston, an urban slave, who was pastor of First Bryan Baptist Church and one of the 20 ministers who met with Gen. Sherman. Houston’s grave is one of three or four graves in the cemetery that has a cast-iron fence, with ornate ironwork, surrounding it.

Memories of Laurel Grove South Growing up in Savannah’s historic Brownville Community, today Cuyler Brownsville, Tompkins Gym and Pool, on Ogeechee Road, was the center of summer life, south of Victory Drive.

Across the street, just beyond the summer playground, with its seesaw and magical whip around was a six-foot chain link fence outlining Laurel Grove South Cemetery.

Growing up, kids would dare each other to run over touch the fence and come back. Then as I began to fancy myself as a young poet, and I would go to the quiet place on the playground and write, still

not brave enough to enter the cemetery gates. I remember seeing the washed up hair and what looked like bones along the chain link fence after a hard rain; this was bottomland for sure.

Then as if by magic, everything is when you’re young, the city starting digging up the ground where 36th and 37th streets ended on Ogeechee Road. I didn’t know why and my eighth grade mind could only be excited about being able to take this temporary “dirt” shortcut walk, with my friends, to Cloverdale and even walk over to Carver Village from there. This was short-lived because next came Interstate 16 barreling into 37th Street as it does today. My world changed and so did the neighborhood.

Later, I realized that further up, along Ogeechee Road, near Anderson Street, was another cemetery behind a chain link fence, this one was Laurel Grove North.

In 2008, while working on the Civil War Savannah series, would be the first time I ever entered Laurel Grove North.

At that time, it was to see the graves of the Confederate soldiers there. I had never ventured into it even though 61

it was in my neighborhood growing up. It was the “unsaid” of “that’s the white cemetery” and somehow it was “unspoken” not to make it the shortcut to Carver Village even when it meant taking a longer walk around.

Fast-forward to the 1990s and my photojournalism years of cemetery pictures. Of course, Laurel Grove South was first on my list. Then I returned to teach History at St. Vincent’s Academy, my alma mater, and remembered being a student there when we walked through Colonial Cemetery for “exercise” before the gym was built.

With those days behind me, I decided to walk my Georgia History class through Colonial and have them chart famous Savannahians who were buried there.

Then my mind flashed on those “famous graves” I’d spotted at Laurel Grove South Cemetery and my photography of the “Black Minister’s graves” there. It finally made sense Laurel Grove South Cemetery is full of history, and it is important to preserve because so much of the history in the black community prior to Emancipation is not written down.

Mr. Law’s Mission:

Laurel Grove South Cemetery Westley Wallace Law, civil rights activist, historian and preservationist was buried in Laurel Grove South Cemetery, in 2002. It is a historically black cemetery on Savannah’s West Side that Mr. Law, while still heading up the local chapter of the NAACP led a conservation program in the 1970s. What started out to be preservation ended up being a Savannah Black History Lesson.

Today, Johnnie Brown, owner and operator of The Black Heritage Trail Tours takes his guests through Laurel Grove. On a recent tour, there was an opportunity to ride along. As he enters the gates, he says, “Mr. Law is still maintaining the Laurel Grove”, and points out city of Savannah work trucks that seem to appear on cue. The tour van

slowly rolls past Mr. Law’s gravesite as Brown talks about his work in the civil rights movement. He said that Law felt he “carried the weight of the people” working as a postman. He added that due to his involvement with the NAACP, Mr. Law was made to walk long blocks, in white neighborhoods, with heavy bags.

Then Brown pointed out the “shell” that sits aloft Mr. Law’s gravestone and said the “sea shell does not move.”

Enough said and we move on to another history lesson, the slave graves at Laurel Grove South “on our right,” Brown points to unmarked graves, and “house people” headstones with first names, he said. Next the grave of Alexander Harris, born 1818, died 1899.

Decorating his grave is the Confederate

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States of America marker and a small confederate flag. Harris was a mason and the gravestone is a large granite stone with Masonic symbols.

As we go back in time, Brown points to the remnants of the rice fields as we ride along in Laurel Grove South Cemetery.

As we are about to leave the cemetery, Brown makes one last stop on the tour and the group gets out to view the gravestone of Sarah. It’s an interesting backstory because Sarah was drowned at sea, 1838, on the steamship Pulaski.

It was a tragic story where many Savannahians died; however, the family of Sarah’s owners remembered her with this tribute. The stone was placed in the cemetery once it opened and reads in part:

(Above and Facing page) Westley Wallace Law in Laurel Grove South Cemetery, 1999. (RIGHT) W.W. Law, project workers make grave rubbing, 1975. (BELOW) W.W.Law at the gravestone of Sarah, who was drowned at sea in 1838 on the steamship Pulaski.

“Laurel Grove South is a precious treasure that bears witness to a deep and abiding faith in God, pride of race, perseverance and outstanding achievements against the odds.” - Westley Wallace Law, Savannah Morning News, Feb. 6, 1995 “This tablet is erected by her surviving master to the memory of Sarah; the excellent colored servant of: Mrs. Corinne Louisa Hutchinson; who in her 20th year was drowned by the destruction at sea of the steamer Pulaskis; on the night of 14th June, 1838.”

It is interesting to note, that the identity of a people who were enslaved were recognized in their final resting place.

Saving Laurel Grove South and History Laurel Grove South Cemetery is still active today with burials continuing there.

However, like a lot of historic cemetery sites, the family members no longer care for the gravesites because they don’t live in the area or they may be deceased.

There have been several movements to preserve Laurel Grove South Cemetery and its history. There was an effort was in 1931 when the cemetery was cleaned up. Then in 1958 a group of black Savannahians started another preservation movement and the

Savannah Sugar Refinery donated wroughtiron gates to the city for the cemetery. The city of Savannah, at that time, spent $3,000 to renovate and clean up the site.

In the 1970s, Westley Wallace Law, under the auspices of the local chapter of the NAACP, took on a conservation effort to clean up Laurel Grove South Cemetery and succeeded.

In a book, about Laurel Grove South Cemetery, published by the city of Savannah, written by Historian Charles Elmore. Elmore said, W. W. Law, “Almost singlehandley led the movment to improve Laurel Grove South Cemetery. He identified historically 63

significant grave sites which led the city of Savannah maintaining this venerable cemetery in a dignified manner by providing street names and markers to make it easy for citizens and historians to identify various burial places.”

Law left a plaque, in Laurel Grove, with the “NAACP” name, not his own, the dates of the work, “1973 – 1974.” Today the plaque can be seen near the graves of the ministers of the black Baptist church, Rev. Andrew Bryan, Rev. Andrew Marshall of First African Baptist and Rev. Cunningham of Second African Baptist Church.

In the 1990s, Law returned to his work in Laurel Grove South, this time with a group of students from the local colleges. That work documented the conditions of the gravesites and has been catalogued as part of the collection at the Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum.

While the upkeep of the cemetery looks good on the surface, closer inspection, in certain areas, reveal there are serious problems brewing with graves caving in on themselves and toppled headstones. It may be time to start the “Preserve Laurel Grove South Cemetery and its History” effort again.

African-American Cemeteries:

Older Cemeteries Trapped by Change With as much as 202 years of service to their communities, Eugenia Cemetery, Old Church Cemetery, Zion White Bluff Baptist Church Cemetery and Houston Baptist Church Cemetery are pillars of continuity in a countryside that has undergone continual change.

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The oldest is Zion, established by slaves in 1814, according to a July 27, 1986 article in the Savannah Morning News. The church and cemetery sit inside the Paradise Park Subdivision, at the end of a narrow, unpaved road.

The church building was renovated in 1898, and the gravesites are scattered around the quiet, tree-lined cemetery. It’s part of a traditional African-American community that was centered in the White Bluff section of the county.

Unlike Zion, Eugenia Cemetery does not sit back from traffic: It is located at the corner of Sallie Mood Drive and Montgomery Crossroad, once a rural intersection, now a busy southside connection.

In the 1980s, as part of a plan to widen White Bluff to four lanes, 33 graves were relocated. The situation was not settled without some controversy. ThenChatham County Commissioner Deanie Frazier, advocating for the families with friends and relatives buried there, commented “Why do you have to disturb people who had a part in the history of this town to make progress? If this had been Bonaventure Cemetery, there would be no issue.”

Some of the graves in Eugenia date back to the 1820s. The cemetery is part of the Sandfly community, with deep ties to its churches, Speedwell United Methodist, Macedonia Baptist, Isle of Hope Union Missionary Baptist and Union Skidaway Baptist.

Old Church Cemetery on Skidaway Road is part of that Sandfly network as well. Named for a Catholic Church that once occupied the site, it can trace its origin to 1863.

On the westside of Chatham County, another traditional AfricanAmerican church has development right at its front door. Organized in 1886 by the Rev. Ulysses L. Houston, a Savannah religious and political leader, Houston Baptist served as a praise house and cemetery for freed slaves with ties to nearby Rice Hope Plantation.

The four-lane highway that runs past it was then the Old Augusta Road. It’s now Georgia Highway. 21, an ever churning connection between Savannah and Effingham County.

The graves in the small, adjoining cemetery date back to 1880.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; www.georgiaconservancy.org.

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• FROM OUR FILES •

OLD BURIAL GROUND IS MOVED BY ARMY

STOOD IN WAY OF ImPORTANT ROAD TO QUARTERMASTER’S DEPOT AUGUST 11, 1942 An ante-bellum cemetery that stood in the way of a national defense highway connecting the Army’s Quartermaster’s Depot with highway 17 has been removed in its entirety to a new location on the banks of the Savannah river perhaps a mile from its original location.

If it had not been for the necessity of establishing the road to serve the nation’s war effort the cemetery might have never been discovered for it was grown over in woods and the last burial was two decades ago.

At the insistence of Col. Henry Hockwald, in charge of the depot, all of the bodies were taken to the new site together with their markers. Those without gravestones were supplied some by the Army Depot workers. The new cemetery occupying a quite spot on the river bank has been supplies with a rustic fence and a name – Rae’s Hall Cemetery.

Colonel Hockwald explained that the name was that of a plantation which at one time flourished there, the original owner having been Maj. Gen. Samuel Elbert of Revolutionary fame.

There were 38 bodies removed to Rae’s Hall Cemetery, and of this number eight were known. The oldest of the graves was that of a slave named Emily who was buried by an appreciative master. She was a girl of 19, and according to the headstone, was a faithful servant, born in the year of 1822 and died November 17, 1841.

The other identified dead were: Millie Gibbs, who died October 5, 1891, at the age of 65; Benjamin Frasier, born February 19, 1877, and died October 9, 1909; Richard Gibbons, born February 7, 1861, and died May 24, 1919; Sarah Nash, who died June 10, 1909, at the age of 60; Ophelia Fugerson, who died February 1, 1922, at the age of 34; William Haywood, who died April. 2, 1890, at the age of 80; and Ben Small, born 1813 and died 1889 at the age of 76.

During surveying operations preparatory to the construction of the road leading from the administration building to Highway No. 17, the surveyors discovered in the underbrush the remains

of the cemetery whose use had been discontinued some twenty years ago.

This matter was called to the attention of Colonel Hockwald, Quartermaster Corps, and by him brought to the attention of Capt. William B. Clarke, Corps of Engineers. These officers inspected the site and discovered that the proposed road would pass through the center of this cemetery. Before taking any steps for the construction of the road or for the removal of any remains, Maj. R.A. Merrill, Corps of Engineers, area engineer of the Savannah Quartermaster Depot, obtained a letter from the health officer of Chatham County granting permission for the removal of any remains discovered and Captain Clarke obtained verbal authority from the chairman of the Board of Commissioners of Chatham County for such removals.

The oldest grave appeared to be that of the slave girl named Emily, whose interment took place in the year 1841.

This grave was identified by a marble marker erected to her memory by her grateful master. The most recent burial was established as in the year 1922 b y an undertaker’s card contained in a galvanized iron grave maker.

In order to obtain available facts concerning the history of the cemetery, Captain Clarke communicated with Mrs. Lucy McIntyre of the Works Projects Administration, Savannah office, and with Mrs. Marmaduke Floyd of the Savannah Historical Research Society. From these parties and from a conversation with Marmaduke Floyd, it was established that this cemetery in the beginning was a part of the plantation of General Elbert. He was the owner of the original plantation known as Rae’s Hall. After the death of General Elbert his remains and those of his wife were interred on the plantation property. In the year 1924 they were removed and reinterred with appropriate ceremony in old Christ Church burial ground at the corner of Oglethorpe Avenue and Abercorn Street. From the information obtained, the plantation of General Elbert passed to other hands after his death and this

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cemetery was established at the burial place for the slaves of the new owners. It continued to be a burial place for Negroes until the year1922 at least.

Those first buried in the plot appear to have been some of the original slaves and their families. In more recent years it has become a general burial ground for Negroes living in the vicinity.

After proper approvals above mentioned had been obtained, Colonel Hockwald selected a site in the northeast corner of the property of the Southeastern Compress Company and approximately on the site of the original plantation home. This site was cleared, suitably fenced, and made ready to receive such remains as were removed from the original cemetery.

On June 16, 1942, workmen, under direction of Captain Clarke, proceeded with the removal of remains from such spots as could be identified as graves.

The first body to be removed was that of the slave girl Emily, since her grace was directly in the line of the proposed new roadway. The complete skeleton was found and several hand-wrought nails from the coffin. In the chest cavity of the skeleton the dried remains of several sprays of flowers which she evidently held in her hands, were found. After the removal of the remains they were placed in a suitable box and marked with the inscription contained on the marble head-marker. This was done to make certain that when the remains were transported to the new burial place the marker and box would not become separated. A similar procedure was followed in the case of every grave which contained a marker of any sort. Unmarked graves were located by depressions in the ground.

Grave markers varied in material, type and marking. Some were of marble, giving the name, date of birth and date of death. Some were of plain marble or concrete containing no name, date or initials. Several were of wood with initials roughly carved and others were of wood with no identification marks whatever. Each was placed with the box

containing the remains removed from the grave over which the marker stood, both suitably marked.

In several instances the position of the remains varied. In three instances the skeletons were lying face down.

One skeleton was found lying on its side with knees drawn up. There was no evidence of a coffin and it appeared that this person died during the yellow fever epidemic which cost the lives of many people in Savannah, and, because of the number, required hasty burials. In one grave of such nature an additional person had been interred in a coffin on top of the group. In several instances of group burials the sizes of the skeletons indicated that they were the remains of an entire family or the greater part of a family, thus again indicating that these group graves might be composed of individuals who passed away within a few hours of one another. One grave contained the remains of a mother and two small children.

Only one casket was found practically intact, and with no earth in the coffin.

The remains were exposed by careful removal of the side of the coffin, exposing a perfect skeleton in natural position. A hair comb and brush were in the casket.

Two coffin plates were found, both of inexpensive metallic composition and with the words “At Rest” indented in the metal. Several instances were found in which a coffin handles were discovered.

From the designs of the handles it would be safe to assume that these graves were more than twenty-five years old.

In the reinterment of the remains in the new location, every precaution has been taken by Colonel Hockwald to place headstones, markers or footstones with the remains whose graves they originally marked. The new cemetery is located on a hill near the Savannah River in a clearing beneath large oaks.

Each grave bears its original marker and new markers have been provided for unidentified graves. The cemetery is surrounded by a rustic fence and the entrance is designated “Rae’s Hall Cemetery.”

Confederate Captain, Servant Hold Common Bonds in Death Though they are buried on opposite sides of Savannah, John F. Wheaton and his onetime servant Old Tom are bound in death, as they were in life, by slavery.

Old Tom is buried in Laurel Grove South Cemetery, long the city’s primary burial ground for African-Americans. Pretty much all we know about him is encapsulated on his tombstone:

In Memory Of Old Tom Faithful Servant for Fifty Years of Capt. John F. Wheaton, Died Feb. 11, 1904, Age 96.

His plot contains a Southern Cross of Honor, a time-honored symbol of service in the Confederate Army. Old Tom was owned by the Wheaton family before and during the Civil War, according to a 1979 Washington Post story on W.W. Law and the Negro Heritage Trail. And, on Confederate Memorial Day, when small Confederate flags were placed on the graves of white soldiers in Laurel Grove North, the veterans would walk over to Laurel Grove South and place a flag in Old Tom’s plot as well.

A Southern Cross of Honor also marks Wheaton’s grave in Bonaventure Cemetery. In addition, there is a delicate and detailed bronze rendering of a hat and belt of the Chatham Artillery, the Confederate unit Wheaton commanded during the Civil War. Wheaton also served three terms as the mayor of Savannah, and played a significant role in combating the conditions which led to yellow fever epidemics.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Washington Post website.

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Fort Pulaski Fort Still Holds Reminders of The Immortal 600 and Others The cemetery at Fort Pulaski National Monument, a small, brick-enclosed reminder of the price of military service, sits just outside the moat.

The oldest gravestone is that of Lt. Rob Rowan, who died on March 3, 1800, some 47 years before the fortification was completed. The most poignant gravestone is that of Charles Howard Sellmer, the infant son of Lt. Charles Sellmer and his wife Marion, who died six weeks after his birth in 1872.

And, the most perplexing, for those not well versed in Confederate history, is the marble marker to the Immortal Six Hundred. Prisoners of war, these 600 Confederate officers were sent to Fort Pulaski in October of 1864. Prior to that, they had been quartered on Morris Island in Charleston harbor, in direct line of fire from Confederate guns at Fort Sumter.

They had been placed there on the order of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, in retaliation for the Confederate positioning of 600 Union officers in the city of Charleston in direct line of fire from Federal artillery.

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A yellow fever epidemic in Charleston forced the Confederates to move the 600 Northern officers, and the 600 Confederates were then sent to Fort Pulaski. During the winter of 1864-1865, 13 of Southern soldiers died, and were buried at Fort Pulaski. Most of them succumbed to dehydration, brought on by dysentery.

Their names are listed on the marker, which was dedicated on Oct. 27, 2012, by the Georgia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

The cemetery had, at one time, been much larger. An adjacent marker, titled “Final Resting Place,” explained that “Union and Confederate soldiers, as well as the people who built the fort and supported the troops garrisoned here, once shared this hallowed ground. After the Civil War, the U.S. Army moved the Union troops’ remains to Beaufort National Cemetery in South Carolina, but the others remain.”

Sources: Georgia Historical Society files; Savannah Morning News files: nps. gov/fopu.

• FROM OUR FILES •

Full Honors for Elbert’s Remains

Military to Pay Respects Upon Reinterment Will Be Held Monday

Col. Raymond Sheldon in Command of Military Escort MARCH 6, 1924

Full military honors accorded a military and civil leader will mark the reinterment of the remains of Gen. Samuel Elbert which will take place in the Colonial Cemetery next Monday afternoon at 4 o’clock. The occasion will be of general interest to the various historic societies and to the whole community.

Brig. Gen. R.J. Travis, who has been appointed chairman of the committee, handling the arrangements for the final resting place of the Colonial Governor of Georgia, completed yesterday afternoon practically all details for the burial. The funeral procession will be strictly military and no civilians or patriotic societies will take part.

At 3:45 o’clock Monday afternoon the remains will be moved from the undertaking establishment of Fox & Weeks accompanied by a full military escort in command of Col. Raymond Sheldon, commandant of Fort Screven. The Eighth Infantry Band from Fort Screven will head the column and there will follow two companies of infantry from Fort Screven, one platoon of sailors from the destroyers Farragut and Percival, one platoon from the Coast Guard cutter Yamacraw, one battery dismounted.

One Hundred and Eighteenth Field Artillery; the two Washington guns presented to the Chatham Artillery by George Washington, and one caisson on which the remains will be carried.

The honorary pallbearers will consist of Maj. Ronald D. Johnson USA; Col. Joseph H. Thompson, commander of the One Hundred and Eighteenth Field Artillery; Maj. G. W. Price, USA; Lieut. Com. Phillip W. Lauriat of the Yamacraw; Lieut. Com. C.H. Cobb of the Percival; Lieut. Col. Walter E. Coney; ORC, of the Spanish War Veteran; Lieut.

Col. W.R. Neal, One Hundred and Eighteenth Field Artillery, and Maj. W.A. Winburn, ORC., American Legion. These officers have been requested to report at the funeral chapel at 3:45 o’clock Monday afternoon in uniform with mourning band on their left sleeves and side arms with mourning knot.

The active pallbearers will include six non-

commissioned officers, two each from Fort Screven, the naval vessels in port, and the One Hundred and Eighteenth Field Artillery.

The funeral march will move east on Liberty Street to Habersham, north on Habersham to Oglethorpe Avenue, and west on Oglethorpe Avenue to Abercorn Street with the head of the column resting on this street.

A platform will be erected near the site of the grave and here representatives from the local historic societies will occupy a position of honor in respect to the deceased leader in Georgia during the colonial period. These societies are Sons of the Revolution, Savannah Chapter, D.A.R.; Colonial Dames of America; Georgia Society of Colonial Wars; Georgia Society of the Cincinnati Daughters of Confederacy; and Lachlan McIntosh Chapter, D.A.R. Mayor Seabrook, the aldermanic body, and the County Commissioners have also been invited to be present at the burial.

The ceremonial formalities of a regular military funeral will take place when General Elbert’s remains are lowered into the grave in the historic burial ground. Taps will be sounded by an army bugler, and a salute will be fired over the grave. While the services are being conducted in the Colonial Cemetery, field piaces of the 118th Field Artillery will fire in the Park Extension the governor’s salute of 17 guns. It will be necessary to fire the salute there because of the larger space than in the Colonial Cemetery as the concussion from the guns will shatter the window panes.

Colonel Shelton will have a staff of one officer from the naval craft in port, two officers from Fort Screven and Major Lester Karow will also serve on 69

this staff.

As this will be an occurrence of unusual interest to many historic organizations throughout the country, efforts are being made to have motion pictures made of the burial so that they can be shown in theaters. It is significant to note that the re-interment will take place when the two main branches of the military service, Army and Navy will be represented and the old field pieces of the Chatham’s presented by the first President of the United States will be at the scene to lead a touch of the ancient days of Georgia and the men who fought for it.

Col. F.W. Altataetter, executive vice president of the Board of Trade, has written a letter requesting that he investigate the feasibility of having motion pictures made of the burial ceremony. It is felt by those in charge that such an occasion should not go unnoticed by Savannahians and that it should be placed before the American public as the close of an epoch is Savannah’s history.

Jewish Burial Grounds Small Jewish Cemeteries Carry a Significant History

Tucked away between West Boundary Street and what used to be West Broad Street, a small, walled Jewish cemetery is one of the few extant links to the 1779 Siege of Savannah.

Its location on a bluff that overlooked the battlefield – the second bloodiest engagement of the entire Revolutionary War – brought it to the attention of French and American officers who positioned a Haitian infantry unit in reserve next to it on the morning of Oct. 9, 1779, the climactic day in the allies’ monthlong confrontation with British forces.

A historical marker next to the cemetery wall commemorates the events there that morning: “General (Benjamin) Lincoln’s orders … stated ‘The second

place of rallying, or the first if the redoubt should not be carried, will be at the Jew’s burying ground where the reserve will be placed.’”

To the Savannah Jewish community, the cemetery is all this and far more. To them, it also represents a tangible connection to the 42 Jewish colonists who arrived in Georgia in July of 1733, just five months after Gen. James E. Oglethorpe and the first English settlers climbed up the Savannah River bluff and started carving the city out of the forest.

Oglethorpe set aside a burial ground for those Jewish pioneers. Located at the present day median of Oglethorpe Avenue and Bull Street, it was the primary Jewish cemetery until 1770, when a re-

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quest to enlarge it was denied, according to local historian B.H. Levy.

Two other Jewish cemeteries, both located in the section of Savannah then dedicated to five-acre garden plots, and situated some 180 feet apart, were founded about that time by two halfbrothers, Levi and Mordecai Sheftall.

Levi’s cemetery was for family use only: Mordecai’s, the larger of the two, was the one cited by Gen. Lincoln in his orders, and it was the one that became the next primary cemetery for the congregation of Mickve Israel.

The Mordecai Sheftall Cemetery was dedicated on Aug. 3, 1773, although several burials took place there before that date, including those of Minis Minis,

Solomon Solomons and Hetty Serzatos.

Some of the more prominent people interred there over the next 80 or so years included: • Abigail Minis, one of the 1733 settlers and the wife of Abraham Minis, she ran the family business from 1757 until 1794, when she died at the age of 93; • Daniel Nunez, the son of Dr. Samuel Nunez, the physician whose presence among the original Jewish settlers heavily influenced Oglethorpe’s decision to let them remain in the colony; • Mordecai Sheftall, who started the cemetery and served as a colonel for the Patriot forces during the Revolutionary War, the highest rank attained by any Jewish officer; • and Sheftall Sheftall, the son of Mordecai, who also served with the Patriots, and following the war became a Savannah lawyer. He steadfastly continued to dress

in the old Continental style, including knee breeches and silk stockings, and was known in the community as “Cocked Hat” Sheftall. When he died in 1848, Savannah militia units marched to honor his memory.

Burials in the Mordecai Sheftall Cemetery continued through the late 1850s, but by that time the Jewish community had another choice, the recently opened Laurel Grove Cemetery. Built in the rural cemetery style, Laurel Grove was only 1½ miles from Savannah City Hall and offered a park-like setting with large family lots.

Four acres, “more or less,” were to be “set apart for the special use of the members of the Hebrew congregation for cemetery purposes,” according to the 1854 city ordinance for city cemeteries. The acreage, however, came with conditions: The congregation was expected to clear, prepare, lay out and fence the ground at its own expense, and, when that was completed, “the

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purchase money of all lots” was to be paid into the city treasury.

Some 30 years later, in 1887, the congregation again looked for more space, this time in the bucolic setting of Bonaventure Cemetery. It took some 20 years for that quest to be fulfilled. In 1907, the city purchased Bonaventure for $30,000, and, in 1909, added 20 acres to its expanse, and dedicated that space for Jewish burials.

Both Congregation Mickve Israel and Congregation B’nai B’rith Jacob were involved in this transaction.

In 1917, a Jewish chapel, the only one within a Savannah cemetery and believed to be the only one in any city in the state, was placed in the section. The architect of this square, symmetrical building is thought to have been Hyman Witcover, a member of Mickve Israel, and the designer of Savannah City Hall.

As Jewish burials were conducted in Lau-

• FROM OUR FILES •

JEWISH BURIAL GROUNDS

SLEEP OF GIBSON FAMILY DISTURBED VANDALS DESECRATE RESTING PLACE

THOSE DEAD 129 YEARS

By Eugene Wright MAY 13, 1939 For one hundred and twenty-nine years the tomb of the family of Robert Gibson, identified by the above inscription, remained unmolested in its secluded location some 400 yards west of the Girl Scout camp on Whitmarsh Island. Curiosity prompted some inquisitive person or perhaps even vandals located the large tomb partially covered with vines and shrubbery recently and the final resting place of the Irish family was disturbed.

A small opening was cut through the brick in the south side of the sloping top, just large enough for an average size person to descend into the crypt.

Persons residing in the vicinity discovered the opening more than a week ago, which led groups of curious persons to the scene.

To one side of the tomb was a large tablet, knocked from its foundation and broken in three pieces. When reassembled, the stone revealed the following inscription: Family Of Gibson Robert Gibson Emigrated from Ireland in the year 1755.

Believing it a sacred duty his sons Have erected This stone to his memory.

A.D.1810.

The inside of the tomb reveals several interesting articles, foremost of which is a large metal coffin containing a well-preserved body of a woman.

The iron face-plate from the coffin had been removed probably by the one who first entered the tomb, recently revealing a glass plate over the face.

Because of the air-tight sealing the body had remained in a good state of preservation even over such a long period of time.

Shaped similar to a torpedo, the coffin probably was one of the more costly ones of the day. It is of heavy iron and slightly over six feet in length. It apparently had been moved near the small opening from the original resting place.

Inside of the tomb is a space of approximately ten by twelve feet, with a curved ceiling dangling from four-and-a-half to six-and-a-half feet in height.

Portions of three skeletons can be observed in various parts of the crypt, indicating others had been buried in the same tomb. Numerous bones of the arm, leg, thigh, and rib are scattered about the floor, loose boards and dirt indicate the other coffins had probably rotted and the wooden floor loosened by age and dampness.

The inside of the tomb is covered with a whitewash substance and remains somewhat bright. The bricks around the entrance, as well as those on the edge of the low wall near the tomb, show much wear of recent time and indicate many persons have been there.

Same prankish person has arranged a scaring device in the tomb. In one corner several bricks were parted approximately a quarter an inch. Through this to the outside was a string on the inside end of which was tied a big white cloth. Evidently the prankster, on knowing someone was in the tomb would pull the string outside and cause the white cloth inside to flutter. It probably scared more than one person in the past few days.

County officials are contemplated sealing the tomb within the next day or so to prevent further disruption.

There are several old family tombs in the vicinity of Savannah, located on long-ago operated plantations. Notable among these are the Barnard Family Tombs on Wilmington, and the Screven Family Tomb on Screven Island. The Screven vault was sealed in 1802 and the last recorded burial in the plot was in 1812.

On a site for a former plantation to the west of the city is a tomb which was desecrated by moonshiners several years ago the offenders using it as a storage place for liquor.

Ellen Byck and Paul Kulbersh look at the Marker for Sheftall Sheftall at the Old Jewish Burial Ground. rel Grove and Bonaventure, the old Mordecai Sheftall Cemetery sadly languished. The area was still laid out in garden lots in the 1840, but, by the time the last burial occurred there in 1916, it was largely an industrial setting.

A large cotton mill, which first operated as the Arkwright Cotton Mill and later became the Savannah Cotton Mill, sat just to the west of the cemetery. It ginned cotton from approximately 1871 until 1898 and employed as many as 100 workers, whose small houses dotted the area.

The current wall around the cemetery was constructed in the 1930s, the same timeframe that a Works Projects Administration map project delineated the area. It showed a cemetery caretaker’s house to the north and a water tower to the south. Other adjacent structures included the Union Station passenger train terminal and the Railway Express building (now Savannah Station).

Today, the Mordecai Sheftall Cemetery is still surrounded by hubbub. Within sight, and certainly with hearing, are a school playground, a parking lot, a construction site and an interstate highway. Yet, inside the cemetery’s sturdy gate, is a small, green oasis that’s surprisingly pastoral and peaceful.

There used to be many more graves here, said Ellen Byck, gesturing to a large, grassy section with no stones or markers. Vandals and thieves destroyed or stole many of the markers and also desecrated graves, added Byck, who is one of the cemetery’s trustees.

She pointed out three large plaques set into one wall that list people “now known to be buried within these walls though the sites of their graves are no longer known.”

Many of the remaining markers are difficult to read, but Byck seemed to know something about each of them. An iron fence set off one family. “They were Azerbaijan (from Spain or Portugal),” said Byck, while most of the other burials were those of Sephardic Jews (from Eastern Europe).

Just inside the gate, three markers are set close together, the final resting places of Mordecai Sheftall, his wife Francis, and son Sheftall.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Quarterly; New Georgia Encyclopedia; “Savannah’s Old Jewish Community Cemetery,” a pamphlet by B.H. Levy; “Savannah Under Fire, 1779: Expanding the Boundaries,” written by archaeologists Rita and Dan Elliott in 2011; interview with Ellen Byck, one of the trustees of the Mordecai Sheftall Cemetery; National Register of Historic Places Registration Form for Bonaventure Cemetery; www.savannahga.gov.

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“He was buried in an unmarked grave with military honors, somewhere on his land grant...”

Roger Lacey Thunderbolt Marker Remembers Georgia Pioneer A historical marker and memorial stone on picturesque River Drive in Thunderbolt commemorate the life and death of Roger Lacey, a Georgia pioneer, Masonic leader and vexed husband.

Lacey (often spelled Lacy in Colonial accounts) arrived in the fledgling colony in 1734. He settled on a 500-acre plantation in Thunderbolt, one of four large land grants in that community.

He soon became a key assistant to Gen. James E. Oglethorpe, who sent Lacey upriver to serve as the post commander and Indian trader in the strategic outpost of Augusta. A Colonial journal entry shows that Lacy was the captain and commander of Fort Augusta, and that a lieutenant and 15 men were stationed there as well.

In England, Lacey had been a member of Masonic Lodge No. 44 at Swan Tavern in Long Acre, London. In Georgia, he played a key part in the 1735 establishment of Solomon’s Lodge No. 1 in Savannah, the oldest continually operating lodge in the Western Hemisphere.

By 1738, he was spending most of his time in Augusta attending to his various duties, but lingering illness and marital difficulties brought him back to Savannah.

The journal of William Stephens, the secretary to the Georgia Trustees, contained several pointed comments about Lacey and his wife Mary. “His plantation has become wholly neglected,” and “his wife … tis to be feared a most vile woman in many respects.”

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And soon, much more serious charges were lodged: “Servants to Mr. (Lacey) were indicted for killing and destroying sundry cattle and feloniously stealing the flesh thereof.” Mary Lacey was also indicted, in her case for “receiving part of said flesh knowing it to be stolen.”

Roger Lacey returned to Savannah by boat on Aug. 1, but he had “grown very ill … (and) his recovery was much doubted,” Stephens recorded. Lacey died just two days later. “He had been a (in poor health) a long while, and afflicted with epileptick (sic) fits from an inward Trouble of Mind, which first grew unhappily through some conjugal Dissensions.”

Another Colonial official, chief magistrate Thomas Causton, displayed a whole new take on the Laceys’ domestic situation when he wrote to the Trustees about Roger Lacey’s death: He “had been a long time ill, and Subject to frequent fainting fitts (sic) supposed to be nervous, occasioned by drinking too liberally.”

“He was buried in an unmarked grave with military honors, somewhere on his land grant,” Ann Stoddard wrote in her history of Thunderbolt.

As for Mary Lacey, she married Theophilus Hetherington in 1740, and died later that year.

Sources: Georgia Historical Society collections; “Autobiography of a Colony: The First Half-Century of Augusta,” by Berry Fleming; website of Roger Lacey Lodge No. 722 F.&A.M.

Skidaway Island Graves Connect Area’s War, Plantation Histories Two links to early Georgia history sit innocuously on golf courses on Skidaway Island, tabby-walled enclosures that harken back to the times when loyalties were divided and indigo and cotton were cash crops.

The older of the two borders the green of the 13th hole of the Palmetto Golf Course. A small, modern marker has been placed beside it, identifying the plot’s former occupant as “Philip Delegal Jr. Georgia Settler Died Oct. 19, 1781.”

His service to the colony of Georgia started much earlier. In 1742, Delegal was an officer in Gen. James E. Oglethorpe’s force that turned back the Spanish in the Battle of Bloody Marsh on St. Simons Island, the small but significant confrontation that ended Spain’s hopes to expand its empire on the East Coast.

Soon afterward, Delegal settled on a rice plantation on the south branch of the Little Ogeechee River. His family then included Jane, his wife, and seven children.

In the 1760s, he started to purchase property on Skidaway Island. His holdings on the island eventually ran to some 4,000 acres and included Green Island.

Collections on file at the Georgia Historical Society indicate that he also petitioned for possession of the “25 acres of land known as Racoon (sic) Hammock near Green Island” and “the land at the

mouth of the Vernon River near Green Island which he has purchased.”

In 1774, Jane died, and, a year or so later, Delegal married Margaret Curtis, who owned property on Skidaway and Little Wassaw Island. Their way of life, however, changed dramatically during the Revolutionary War. As the British and the patriots struggled to gain control of Savannah and the nearby countryside, Skidaway became the frontier, and their plantation and its indigo crop were frequently targeted by marauders from both sides.

Delegal died the year before the fighting ended. His family remained steadfast to the British crown, a stance that cost them in 1782 when they, along with thousands of other loyalists, were forced to leave Georgia.

In 2014, an archaeological survey was conducted on the Delegal grave site. It was led by Armstrong State University professor Laura Seifert, and also involved ASU students and Skidaway Island residents. “While Philip Delegal Jr. may have been buried here at one point in time, he appears to have since been removed,” Seifert wrote in her report. “The soils and artifacts give little indication as to whether the grave was looted or Delegal was removed to be reburied in another cemetery. Since no human bones were

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found, reburial seems the more likely option.”

Seifert and her students also excavated the second site, located on the fairway of the 15th hole of the Oakridge Golf Course. It contains the gravestones of Elcy Waters, and her infant son, Thomas B. Waters.

Elcy and her husband John owned a cotton plantation on Skidaway. Elcy died from complications of childbirth on March 17, 1808, at the age of 26. She was buried next to Thomas, who died Dec. 25, 1804, at the age of 14 months. After Elcy’s death, John remarried. He died in 1835 and was buried in Savannah.

An earlier archaeological survey of the Waters cemetery was conducted in the 1980s at the request of the Army Corps of Engineers. Of that site it said “the grave of Elcy Waters has been robbed and totally vandalized, perhaps within the past five years. The grave of Thomas Waters lies undisturbed.”

The Armstrong investigation echoed that report: “Evidence was found of three graves, but it’s not clear who is buried in them.”

Sources: “An Archaeological Investigation of the Waters and Delegal Cemeteries on Skidaway Island, Georgia,” by Laura Seifert, Digging Savannah, Armstrong State University; Georgia Historical Society collections; The Skinnie magazine of Skidaway Island; “John Waters (1771-1835),” by Helen W. Waters, one of the Savannah Biographies papers in the special collections of Lane Library, Armstrong State University.

Beverly Goode, left, Sara Jones, center and Bernie Goode, active members of the Tybee Beautification Association, look at the restored Tybee Memorial Cemetery.

Mysteries Remain in Tybee Memorial Cemetery In November of 1922, Tybee Island Mayor George Butler sent a letter to the chief of police, telling him, in part, that “It has been called to my attention that there is no record of burials to date in the cemetery at Tybee.”

Today, some 96 years later, there is most certainly a record, and it is also most certain that no one is certain how many people are buried in that peaceful plot now known as Tybee Memorial Cemetery. “Much of its history remains shrouded in mystery,” reads the plaque at the entrance.

Police Chief D. Lysaught, in his 1922 reply to Butler, listed some 20 graves, including those of G.M. Rotureau, J.C. Rotureau and G. Rotureau, who were said to have been washed ashore in 1876. But, the chief, in his corresponding numerical column, counted them as four graves. And, in a 2005 Savannah Morning News story, it was pointed out that no one in the Rotureau family was washed ashore in 1876, or any other year.

Nor does the confusion end there. In 2004, just a few days before a new wrought-iron fence was to be placed around the burial ground, another grave was discovered. It had been covered by sand for years, and was outside the area that would have been protected by the fence.

Concerned by that development, the city commissioned a Charleston firm to search the area with ground-penetrating radar. It found 36 potential burial sites in the area. The fence’s boundaries were then extended to 70 feet by 70 feet.

“This time we made sure we got everybody,” said Bernie Goode, a member of the Tybee Beautification Association, which in 2003-2005 led the cemetery restoration effort.

Still, the plaque at the entrance probably plots the best course for this puzzle: “To all the known and unknown people buried here, we offer our respect and assurance that you are not forgotten. May you rest in peace.”

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GRAVEL HILL CEMETERY

HILLCREST ABBEY CEMETERY

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BETHEL CEMETERY

BRICKYARD CEMETERY

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Christmas Moultrie and Cherokee Hill

CHEROKEE HILL CEMETERY

Christmas Moultrie’s final resting place, Cherokee Hill Cemetery, is just a short ride down Highway. 21 from his birthplace, Mulberry Grove Plantation.

He came into the world on Christmas Day of 1857, thus the distinctive given name. He was also, by several accounts, the last slave born at Mulberry Grove, a historic rice plantation that bordered the Savannah River.

Moultrie stayed on the plantation by choice after the Civil War, his granddaughter Martha McCullough said in a 2014 National Public Radio interview. She recalled visiting him during the 1930s and 1940s. He worked as the caretaker of the property, and hunted and fished on it. He also produced moonshine, which McCullough said she quietly distributed to judges at the courthouse.

Local historian Hugh Golson, whose family owned Mulberry Grove, remembered Moultrie as well. “He was that fascinating man that lived right there at the gate, taking care of everything,” Golson told NPR. Moultrie died on April 23, 1956, at the age of 98 and was buried in Cherokee Hill Cemetery, a rolling, restful (except when a train comes by) patch of tall trees and small headstones that’s just off Gulfstream Road. n 2009, an interchange at the intersection of Highway. 21 and Interstate 95 was named in his honor.

In 2013, his story was brought back into focus with the release of “Savannah,” an independent film that recounted the circa-1910 experiences of Ward Allen, a local blue blood who preferred life as a hunter, and his companion, Christmas Moultrie. Jim Caviezel starred as Allen; Chiwetel Ejiofor portrayed Moultrie; and Jaimie Alexander, Sam Shepard and Hal Holbrook appeared in supporting roles.

Sources: Savannah Morning News files; Georgia Historical Society documents; www.npr.org.

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BONAVENTURE CEMETERY

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COLONIAL PARK CEMETERY

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Acknowledgements Chuck Mobley, chief writer, is a native of Charleston, S.C., a Vietnam War veteran and a 1977 graduate of the University of South Carolina. He worked for the Aiken, S.C., Standard and the Warner Robins Daily Sun before moving to Savannah in 1980 to work for the Savannah Morning News. He’s married to Shelly Mobley, an English teacher at Groves High School, and the father of two children, Hallie and Cooper.

Steve Bisson, chief photographer, is a Savannah native and second generation photojournalist, and has been a photographer for the Savannah Morning News for more than 35 years. He serves as photo chief for the Savannah Morning News/savannahnow.com. He attended the University of Georgia.

VAUGHNETTE GOODE-WALKER spent twenty-five years as a network and cable television news writer, She is the Director of the Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum.

A graduate of St. Vincent’s Academy in Savannah, she taught history there from 1997-2002.

Julia Muller, a native Savannahian, is archivist and online producer at the Savannah Morning News.

Christopher Sweat grew up just west of here in Patterson, but now calls Savannah home. A graduate of the University of Georgia and Armstrong, he is the commercial content manager of the Savannah Morning News. He was responsible for the design and layout of Stories from our Souls.

Thanks to Lee Sandow and JOSH GALEMORE for their support and help on deadline.

Special thanks to the staffs at the Georgia Historical Society and Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum, and to Luciana Spracher with the City of Savannah archives.

Publisher Michael C. Traynor Vice President of Audience Steve yelvington

Executive Editor Susan Catron

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stories from our souls The Living Narratives of Savannah’s Burial Grounds

is part of the

Savannah Stories Collection of Publications from the

Previous editions include: Savannah A to Z, Guide to the good life and Savannah Stories Look for Stories Set in Stone: Savannah’s Unique Architectural Past, Present and Future Coming Summer 2016

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special publication Copyright 2016, Savannah Morning News

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