Oakland Cemetery
| Oakland Cemetery | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| National Register of Historic Places | |||
 Aerial view of the cemetery, important sections are marked |
|||
|
|||
| location | Atlanta , Fulton County , Georgia | ||
| Coordinates | 33 ° 44 '54.8 " N , 84 ° 22' 19.5" W | ||
| surface | 19.4 hectares | ||
| Built | 1850 | ||
| NRHP number | 76000627 | ||
| The NRHP added | April 28, 1976 | ||
The Oakland Cemetery is a cemetery in the city of Atlanta in the US state of Georgia . It is the oldest cemetery in the city and, with an area of 19.4 hectares, its third largest green area. The then 2.4 acre cemetery was created by the city of Atlanta in 1850 as the Atlanta Cemetery . At that time it was still southwest of the city.
The site of the original cemetery is one of the oldest sites in Atlanta, still in its original state after Northern troops burned the rest of the city in the Civil War in 1864. The cemetery reflects the city's eventful history. About 70,000 people are buried on it.
In 1872 he was in Oakland Cemetery renamed to the large number of oak trees (ger .: Oak ) and magnolias to meet on the premises. At that time, the urban area had already enclosed the cemetery in its current size. Due to the further expansion of Atlanta, it is now in the city center.
Oakland is an excellent example of Victorian style cemetery architecture, following the style of garden cemeteries established in the United States by Mount Auburn Cemetery in Massachusetts .
Although the last pieces of land in the cemetery were sold in 1884, funerals are still held here regularly today. The dead are either buried in family graves or on land owned directly by the City of Atlanta; most recently it happened with the former mayor of the city, Maynard Jackson .
There is hardly any iron work here, which is unusual for a cemetery from this period. While ironwork was originally used, the city of Atlanta donated most of it to the US government for the production of armaments during the First World War.
Important parts of the cemetery
The Six Acres
The original Atlanta Cemetery is just beyond the main entrance to Oakland. The Six Acres is commonly referred to as the Six Acres .
The gates and walls of the entrance date from 1896, the year is engraved directly on the keystone of the highest archway.
The first thing you notice right behind the entrance is Jasper Newton Smith's mausoleum. It features a life-size statue of Smith himself. He was a real estate investor who built two large buildings in what was then downtown. Smith was known for his refusal to wear a tie; however, the sculpture originally made for the mausoleum wore one, so Smith refused to pay for it until the tie was removed. One of its buildings, known as The House that Jack Built , was mandated that the corner stone must be preserved, even if the building was later pulled down. The stone is still at MARTA's Peachtreet Center Station on Carnegie Way.
Shortly after the entrance is the first grave erected in the cemetery: Dr. James Nissen was a doctor who only visited town and died of illness there. Legend has it that Nissen feared he might be buried alive (a common belief at the time), so his jugular vein was cut open before burial.
Nissen's tombstone is almost completely weathered over time, the inscription is only known from an extensive inventory of Atlanta's cemeteries by Franklin Garrett in the 1930s. Martha Lumpkin Compton lies just before Nissen's grave on a piece of land donated by the City of Atlanta. The city named itself Marthasville from 1843 to 1845 after the daughter of the former governor .
Also noticeable in this section of the cemetery are the Kontz Memorial and the Neal Monument , two monuments that demonstrate the breadth of artistic creativity at this time. While the Neal Monument is neoclassical , the former is the only example of the US Egypt revival at Oakland Cemetery.
The old Jewish section occupies a small strip of land on the Six Acres. The Hebrew Benevolent Congregation had bought the land, and the state's second oldest Jewish cemetery was built here after the Savannah , Georgia cemetery. The congregation later bought more land that is now a separate section in the cemetery.
The grave of the famous amateur golfer Bobby Jones can be easily recognized by the fact that it is always adorned with golf balls and other golf accessories. The Atlanta born and died golfer was the first to win the double. The immediate surroundings of his grave are adorned by the 18 plants that gave their name to the 18 holes of the Augusta National Golf Club's golf course .
Also in the original cemetery is Franklin Garrett , known as Atlanta's official historian . He worked extensively on the city's history and cataloged it extensively, including numerous graves in Oakland and the other cemeteries in the city.
Within the Six Acres, Margaret Mitchell , the author of Gone With the Wind, rests in the rose-decorated family grave of the Marsh family. Near her grave is a gas lantern that was among the first 50 installed by the Atlanta Gas Light Company in 1856. The lamp, which was damaged by the bombing of the city in 1864, was donated to the cemetery by Franklin Garrett, but the plaque on the lamp shows the wrong year, namely 1850.
Confederate Section
An estimated 6,900 people were buried in the Confederate Section (named after the Confederate States of America ), of which about 3,000 are nameless. During the American Civil War, Atlanta was an important supply and medical center for the southern states . With several important hospitals within a half mile (800 meters) radius of Oakland, numerous soldiers who had died from their wounds were buried here.
Shortly after the end of the war, numerous dead of the Atlanta Campaign , previously buried in improvised graves near the battlefields, were reburied in the Confederate Section of Oakland.
In this section of the cemetery is the Lion of the Confederacy, also known as the Lion of Atlanta . The lion, which watches over a field of unknown soldiers from southern and northern states, was made by TM Brady in 1894 from the largest piece of marble that had been brought in from northern Georgia to date. Although Brady claimed to have created the lion himself, except for a few details, it is a copy of the Swiss lion that can be found in Lucerne .
The section is dominated by a large monument known as the Confederate Oblisk . The 20 meter high obelisk was made of granite from Stone Mountain and was erected on April 26, 1874, the anniversary of Joseph E. Johnston's surrender to William T. Sherman and the end of the American Civil War. For several years it was the tallest structure in the city.
Southwestern generals John B. Gordon and Clement Anselm Evans are buried to the northwest near the obelisk . To the south of the obelisk are numerous military graves marked as such, including 16 graves of Northern soldiers who were buried among the southerners. The practice, which was very unusual for the time, is probably explained by the already dwindling space available in the cemetery.
New Jewish Section
The new Jewish section is relatively close to the old Jewish section within the Six Acres. The Hebrew Benevolent Congregation bought the land in 1878 and a further section in 1892. The graves and tombstones show the merging of the German-Jewish culture, from whose community the members of the congregation mainly came, and the American culture of their surroundings.
The tombs of the Ahavath Achim Synagogue, which acquired part of the land from the Congregation, are clearly different from them. Mainly Eastern European Jews who were much more conservative and orthodox than the members of the congregation were organized in it. Their tombstones are inscribed in Hebrew and are limited to classic Jewish symbolism.
In 1982 this part of the cemetery was vandalized by two local teenagers.
Potter's Field
The three-acre Potter's Field is Atlanta's traditional poor cemetery. After all of the land in the remainder of the cemetery was sold in 1884, people wanting to be buried in Oakland either had to buy land from the private owners at the cemetery or have themselves buried in Potter's Field - an option that is recorded by numerous residents of the city in Claimed. According to archaeological research by Georgia State University in 1978, a total of about 17,000 people are buried here.
Just beyond the outside wall of the cemetery behind Potter's Field are the former Fulton County's cotton mill (being renovated to serve as an apartment block) and Cabbagetown , both built by Jacob Elsas, who is himself on the new Jewish section.
"Black Section"
The section was created during the segregation phase in the United States. To show that it was overcoming this time, the city buried former Mayor Maynard Jackson in this section of the cemetery. In the Black Section, as in Potter's Field, there are hardly any gravestones or other grave decorations today, as these were originally made primarily of wood and other perishable materials. As a result, many of the dead in the cemetery section are unknown today.
Notable people buried here include Bishop Wesley John Gaines (Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and founder of Morris Brown College ), Reverend Frank Qualres (an early supporter of Morehouse College ), Carrie Stelle Logan, and Antoine Graves, who is the only one Mausoleum belongs to the Black Section.
Bell Tower
The Bell Tower, built in 1899, is the largest building on the cemetery grounds. Originally a farmhouse of the future mayor of Atlantas, James E. Williams, stood on this site. From there, General John Bell Hood commanded the southern troops in the Battle of Atlanta on July 22, 1864. At the top of the tower there is a bell that originally signaled the workers to meet here. Coffins were stored on the ground floor. It was extensively restored in 1998, and today the tower houses the Historic Oakland Foundation and the cemetery visitor center.
Monuments and mausoleums
As with almost all cemeteries of comparable size and age, Oakland has numerous monuments and mausoleums, often of great artistic or historical importance.
To the southeast of the cemetery, a historical description describes the events surrounding the Great Locomotive Chase , where Northern soldiers stole a locomotive to disrupt important Confederate States telegraph lines. They were eventually captured, hanged, and briefly held in Oakland before being transferred to the National Cemetery in Chattanooga , Tennessee . The two employees, William Fuller and Anthony Murphy of the Western & Atlantic Railroad , who were also involved in the hunt, are still in the cemetery.
Near the Bell Tower is a memorial to Moses Formwalt , the first mayor of Atlanta and the only one murdered during his tenure. Formwalt, who was serving as DeKalb County's Deputy Sheriff , escorted a prisoner from the Fulton Courthouse, who managed to break loose and stab him.
On a hill near the original cemetery site is the Austell Mausoleum, the most elaborately designed mausoleum in the cemetery. Alfred Austell, one of the founders of the Atlanta National Bank, had it built in the style of the Gothic Revival . It cost around $ 90,000 at the time, but at today's prices it would cost an estimated $ 3 million to build.
Historic Oakland Foundation
The graves in the cemetery belong to the heirs of the deceased, who are also responsible for looking after the graves. Since many families have moved away or lost touch with their ancestors since the middle of the 19th century, many graves have fallen into disrepair through time or sometimes through vandalism. On April 28, 1976, Oakland Cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a Historic District . The following day, history buffs established the Historic Oakland Foundation . The foundation takes care of the restoration and maintenance of numerous historical graves, monuments and mausoleums. It is financed by donations, grants and the organization of events and, in addition to its main task of cemetery maintenance, also provides guides who are supposed to bring the cemetery closer to the public.
Important tombs
In addition to the ones already mentioned, there are:
- There are 25 former Atlanta mayors in the cemetery, including Moses Formwalt, the city's first mayor, and Maynard Jackson , the city's first black mayor.
- Six former Georgia governors, including John B. Gordon (1832–1904), Joseph E. Brown (1821–1894), and Hoke Smith (1855–1931)
- Franklin Garrett (1906–2000), city historian, who gained importance in particular through his extensive work on the city's cemeteries.
- Joel Hurt, founder of Inman Park and Druid Hills , two of the first planned districts of Atlanta.
- Dr. Joseph Jacobs, owner of the pharmacy where John Pemberton first sold Coca-Cola .
- Bobby Jones (1902–1971), golfer who first won both the US Open and the Open Championship in one year.
- Carrie Steele Logan (1829-1900), founder of the first black orphanage in Georgia.
- Morris and Emanuel Rich, founders of Rich’s department store.
- Alexander H. Stephens , Vice President of the Confederate States was intermittently buried in Oakland before being reburied on his private property near Crawfordville .
See also
literature
- Garrett, Franklin Miller (1954). Atlanta and Environs: A Chronicle of Its People and Events. New York, Lewis Historical Publishing Co.
- Henson, Tevi Taliaferro. Carrie Steele Logan. Retrieved March 4, 2005 from http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/
- Historic Oakland Foundation. Historic Oakland Cemetery. ( Memento of November 26, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Retrieved March 4, 2005
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Oakland Cemetery on the National Register Information System. National Park Service , accessed August 8, 2017.
