Visit the Marietta City and Confederate Cemetery in Marietta Georgia -This cemetery provides the final resting place for a broad cross-section of the community's early residents during the l800s.
General Info
Established in the l830s and restored to its present state in the early l900s, the Marietta City Cemetery stands today as a monument to the many people who built our community.
Several former mayors of Marietta and one former mayor of Smyrna are buried here.
Steadman Vincent Sanford, former president of the University of Georgia, whose name the school's football stadium now bears, also rests here. Here too, is U.S. Senator Alexander Stephens Clay, the only Cobb County native ever elected to the U.S. Senate.
Clay's many achievements are sununarized on a 2O-foot-high granite obelisk. In addition to notfig the awards he received and the public offices he held, Gay's monument also bean; an inscription that expresses the enduring strength of his chardcter: "He retreated with the aspects of a victor and though he succumbed; he seemed to conquer".
Amenities: Parking, Public Restrooms, Accessibility for mobility-impaired
The Lady in Black
Beneath the guardian angel that watches over the cemetery , you will discover the legend of the "Lady in Black." Lucy Gartrell, a musician and native ofCobb County, erected a IS-foot-tall white
marble memorial as a tribute to her sister, Mary Annie Gartrell. Lucy, who visited her sister's grave at least twice a week for 46 years, always wore black mourning clothes on her visits and became known as the "Lady in Black." Her tale of devotion, detailed on a historic marker, continues to interest all who visit the quiet family plot on the cemetery's east side.
Uncover the Mystery
The cemetery is known as a place of mystery. In 1895, a city sexton reported seeing ghosts, and on one occasion, Sexton Sanford Gorham said he noticed a man in black watching him as he worked. As he walked toward the man, however, the man vanished - in an open area where there was no place to hide.
Years later, Gorham saw a woman dressed in black standing beside a fresh grave on a rainy day. But when he approached the woman, he discovered that she had disappeared, leaving behind no evidence that she had ever walked on the wet earth.
Understand the History
Throughout the cedar-scentedg rounds of the Marietta City Cemetery are reminders of each era of Marietta's history. In the early 1830s, the Cherokee Indians still occupied portions of Cobb County when the first known marked grave was dug on the hilltop.
This first grave was the final resting place for William Capers G. Harris, the 8-year-old son of wealthy planter and real estate investor Wtlliam Harris and his wife Mary. Young William's headstone bears a poignant message: "As you pass by, so once did I. "
The hill on which William Capers G. Harris was buried soon became known as a place that helped foster a sense of community among both new and old residents.
Many local historians believe that some of Marietta's earliest Methodist and Baptist congregations worshipped in a log cabin on the hill. One of the four oldest marked graves belongs to a charter member of the Marietta Presbyterian Church.
Other segments of Marietta and Southern society are equally well-represented. These include gravesites of families from the plantations of the Georgia and Carolina Lowcountry, such as that of Francis Harris McLeod, who erected his family's brick mausoleum in 1854 in the style common to coastal cemeteries.
Historical Slave Lot
This spirit of community extended to the city's nonwhite residents, as well. The Old Slave Lot occupies one of the largest single plots in the cemetery. Its name reflects the realities of a different era, and indeed its presence is a rarity - at the time, no other major cemetery in Georgia had a lot devoted to the burial of slaves or free people of African descent.
Interestingly, knowledge of its existence would have been forever lost in the confusion following the Civil War, if not for the efforts of a crippled Confederate Veteran. Robert E. Lawhorn, City Clerk for the City of Marietta, managed to preserve the information as part of his attempt to assemble a complete cemetery record.
This info and the historical info are based on research provided by CUlt Ratledge, conducted under contractual agreement with the City of Marietta.
Confederate Cemetery - Garden of Heroes
More than 3,000 soldiers, from every Confederate state and Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri, now lie in the Marietta Confederate Cemetery. The cemetery was established in September 1863, when Mrs. Jane Porter Glover donated the quiet comer of her Bushy Park Plantation to accommodate the burial of approximately 20 Confederate soldiers who perished in a train wreck just north of Marietta.
A few new graves were added to the cemetery during the next several months, but major expansions did not occur until the war reached nearby Kennesaw Mountain on July 27, 1864.
The greatest expansion of the cemetery took place when the guns at last fell silent. In 1866, the Georgia Legislature appropriated $3,500 to collect the remains of Confederate soldiers who fell elsewhere in Georgia and return them to Marietta for reburial.
The recovery effort was spearheaded by Catherine Winn of the Ladies' Aid Society and Mary Green of the Georgia Memorial Association, who organized groups of women to search for soldiers who were killed on the battlefields at Ringgold, Chickamauga, Kennesaw Mountain, Kolb Farm, and the points north of the Chattahoochee River. These dedicated women helped bring the remains of hundreds of Confederate soldiers to rest with their comrades in Marietta.
Although the National Cemetery had been established for soldiers from both sides of the war, Confederate veterans preferred to be buried in the Marietta Confederate Cemetery with their fellow soldiers.
One private plot belongs to the family of Thomas L. Bussey, who worked for the Western & Atlantic Railroad as a conductor. Bussey was a cadet of the Georgia Military Institute in his younger days, and enlisted in the Confederate service from the Institute. After the war, he worked for the Western & Atlantic Railroad, which once transported many of the soldiers' remains to the Marietta Confederate Cemetery.
As the years passed and the original wooden markers weathered away, the names of soldiers killed in action and buried here were lost. In 1902,c aretakersre placedth e deteriorated original wooden markers with plain marble markers of the type you see today.
In 1907, Mrs. Glover deeded the cemetery to the Ladies' Memorial Association. The Association then turned the property over to the state in 1908, the same year the Kennesaw Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy dedicated the tall marble monument in the center of the cemetery to "Our Confederate Dead."
After the Spanish-American War, this cemetery became the flfSt place in the
South where the Confederate flag was allowed to fly. The hillside also became the focal point of the city's Confederate Memorial Day observance in April.
Phone - Address & Hours of Operation
Phone: 770-429-1115 - Address: 395 Powder Springs St., Marietta Georgia 30060 - Open Daily Dusk-dawn. Group tours by appointment.
