atlantalarry

Tour of Sylvester Cemetery -- October 6,2012 11 AM

Historic Sylvester Cemetery is the final resting place of many of the pioneering families of Atlanta, and the resting place of the founders of East Atlanta Village in particular.

I'll be conducting a tour of this beautiful and historic cemetery on Saturday October 16, 2012 at 11 AM.  It will begin at the intersection of Nash Avenue and Braeburn Circle (map included below)

There will be a 10 per person donation collected to benefit the cleanup of the cemetery.

I'll talk about the history of East Atlanta and southwest Dekalb County, and the role of individuals and families buried in the cemetery in its history.

If you have questions email me at larryfeltonjohnson@gmail.com or phone me at 404-664-2034.

 

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Utoy Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery

I received an email today inquiring  about the Utoy  Primitive  Baptist Church Cemetery.  I'd had checking out that old and overgrown cemetery,which is the final resting place of at least two revolutionary war soldiers, on my todo list for quite some time.  Below are some facts about the church I pulled from Atlanta and Environs, Volume I, by the late Franklin Garrett (who's buried about two miles from me in Oakland Cemetery).

Utoy Primitive Baptist Church was founded in 1824, making it the third church built on the land which until 1821 had been Creek Indian land.  It was originally about a half mile west of the site of the cemetery, and was moved in 1828.  The first elders were John Landers and James Hale.

Like many nineteenth century churches, the discipline was often harsh by today's standards, and members were expelled for a variety of offenses.  According to Franklin Garrett one member was excluded for "moving into the Indian country" (which wasn't difficult since the church was near the Chattahoochee, and the  west side of that river was still Cherokee territory).

One of the more notable residents of the cemetery is Dr. Joshua Gilbert, the first physician in the future city of Atlanta.

The plaque at the site reads as follows:

HISTORIC UTOY CHURCHUtoy Primitive Baptist Church,         the oldest Baptist Church in present Fulton County, was constituted         August 15, 1824, in a log house just west of here. The church         was moved to its present location in the summer of 1828.In 1864 the church was used as         a Confederate hospital. July 22, Col. James S. Boynton, 30th         Georgia, was wounded and brought to Utoy Church for medical care.         Boynton later became President of the Georgia Senate and on March         5, 1883, the day after the death of Governor Alexander H. Stephens,         he became of Governor of Georgia, to serve until a special election         could be held.In the cemetery at Utoy Church         lies buried Dr. Joshua Gilbert, Atlanta's first doctor. Born         in 1815 in South Carolina, Dr. Gilbert was graduated from old         Augusta Medical College in 1845 and came to Atlanta. At that         time Atlanta was called Marthasville and was located in DeKalb         County. Here he practiced medicine until his death in 1889.060-192 GEORGIA HISTORICAL         COMMISSION 1961

                               

Click here to go to the photos I've posted.  Clicking on the images enlarges them.

Atlanta's Hollywood Cemetery

Over the Christmas holidays I spent one day slogging through the woods, dead kudzu, and vine choked hills which constitute much of Atlanta's Hollywood Cemetery at this point.  I always thought that properly restored Hollywood would be one of the most beautiful cemeteries in Atlanta.  It's located on Hollywood Road on the west side of Atlanta, and the winter months are about the only time much of the cemetery is visible and traversable.  recently I've begun collecting contact information on people with family members and ancestors buried in Hollywood Cemetery, and hope to play matchmaker to set up a cemetery friends group and cleanup effort.

Click here to enter my photo album.

Tour of Sylvester Cemetery

I'll be conducting a tour of Sylvester Cemetery next Saturday, October 14th at 10 am.  The cost of the tour is $10.00, and the money will go to the ongoing work of cleaning and maintaining the cemetery.

The theme of the tour this month will be "Women of Sylvester Cemetery".  I'll be focusing on a number women who are buried at the cemetery.

I've written quite a bit about the cemetery, but for those of you not familiar with it, it's on the eastern edge of the East Atlanta neighborhood, near the corner of Clifton Road and Braeburn Circle .  Among the notable people buried there are early country musician "Fiddlin John" Carson, Jake Hall, who was the colorful former Dekalb County sheriff (who never learned to drive, and whose jail was in the basement of his house - if he needed to be driven he'd have one of the prisoners chauffeur him), and "Spanish Jim" Brown, the founder of East Atlanta.

More information about the cemetery, including directions to the cemetery and instructions on how to donate money and time to this enormous project can be found at the web page of the Sylvester Cemetery Foundation (click here to visit the web site)

Sylvester Cemetery Tours

The Sylvester Cemetery Foundation will be conducting tours of the Cemetery in conjunction with the BATL events commemorating the Battle of Atlanta during the Civil War.  Time and details can be found at www.sylvestercemetery.org.

The Sylvester Cemetery Website

A number of us in East Atlanta and southwest Dekalb County have been working on cleaning, restoring, and maintaining the historic Sylvester Cemetery.  The Sylvester Cemetery Foundation has a website maintained by Jerry Semprevino at www.sylvestercemetery.org.  The cemetery has a fascinating history, and is worth a visit (not to mention a contribution to the Sylvester Cemetery Foundation).

March Sylvester Cemetery Cleanup

Yesterday, Saturday March 12th, we had the March cleanup of Sylvester Cemetery, a cemetery adjoining the East Atlanta neighborhood which I've written about in the past (click here to go to one such article and click here to go to my general Sylvester Cemetery photo album).  Many of the families who founded East Atlanta are buried there.  My wife Nancy Gates Moulton, who was the first president of the Sylvester Cemetery Foundation is also buried at the cemetery.

It was a great day for a cleanup, clear with moderate temperatures, and we cleared quite a pile of the saplings and overgrowth which had been cut earlier.

I've created a photo album with a few shots of the cleanup (click here to visit).

Hardeman Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery

I've assembled a photo album of the second location of the Hardeman (also spelled Hardman) Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery.  The Hardeman Primitive Baptist Church was founded in November of 1825 and was originally on land owned by Naman Hardman west of the intersection of Clairmont and North Decatur Roads.  The original gravesite is reported to still exist, but I have not visited it yet.

In 1905 the church moved to Glenwood Avenue east of Candler Road, just west of Columbia Drive.  The cemetery and church grounds are well kept, and indications are that the church still meets.  The dates on the markers indicate that the cemetery, though small, has been in continous use.

Click here to see the photos.

Heartbreaking

Those of you who know me or know me through my writings are aware of my interest  in cemeteries.  I don't expect most people to share this  interest, which I  am aware may  seem to some as ranging somewhere between eccentric and morbid.

I have a backlog of hundreds of photos of old cemeteries on all ends of the spectrum, from well maintained to hidden and neglected.  Recently I started asking friends and relatives who have lived during different time periods in various locations in and around Atlanta to let me know of  cemeteries of which I might not be aware.  I was particularly interested in hidden or neglected cemeteries.

Johnny O'Neal, a friend who had grown up in East Atlanta and the suburbs to the east of that neighborhood told me of a small cemetery near I-20 east which he describes as having been in a state of extreme neglect even in the 1960s.

The area he described has been in severe economic decline for decades, and the 1950s and 60s commerical sprawl in the vicinity is a ghost town of boarded up convenience stores and empty chain grocery stores.

I searched for it, and had nearly given up, when I decided to give it one last try and walk behind one of the boarded up convenience stores.  I found five visible graves.  Click here to see the photos.  I've included a shot of the abandoned convenience store.  There are probably quite a few more graves under the years of overgrowth.  Given the small size of the cemetery I suspect that it was a family graveyard attached to a farmhouse.  I'm going to make an attempt to research it, but the origin of the cemetery may be hard to determine.  At minimum I'll go back with a rake, and try to brush back the overgrowth to determine the years of the first and last marked graves.

A quote is attributed to Benjamin Franklin to the effect that you can tell the character of a people by the state of their cemeteries.  By that criterion the verdict on us will be mixed at best.

Crowley Graves at the now dead Avondale Mall

Avondale Mall, formerly named Columbia Mall, was one of the earliest enclosed malls in the Atlanta area.  It was renamed Avondale Mall in an attempt to stave off it's inevitable economic decline by associating it with nearby stable and upscale Avondale Estates.  The mall now sits empty, and recently Walmart attempted to locate on the grounds against neighborhood objections (the neighbors were successful in blocking Wal-mart).

I had always heard in the 60s that the parking lot of the mall had engulfed a family graveyard after the family had resisted attempts at relocation of the remains.  I vaguely remembered seeing an enclosure there, and since I was in the area photographing Avondale Estates, decided to look for the graves.  Click here to see the photographs.

The plaque is a bit hard to read in my photos (a locked gate seperated me from the plaque and the stairway to the graves) but it claims that the land was originally a royal grant, and that the Crowley family occupied it in 1802.  This would place the Crowleys on the land well before the 1821 land lottery which  cleared the Muscogee Indians from the land and distributed land lots to Anglo-American settlers.

If the information on the plaque is true, I think it would be reasonable for people in the area to demand that however that land is developed that a decent and dignified buffer (a small park or a plaza) be placed around the gravesites.

If anyone knows any of the Crowley descendents I'd love to talk to them.