The first person buried at Oakland was laid to rest in May 1850, a month before the land was purchased by Atlanta to become its city cemetery. The fast-growing municipality eventually expanded the burial grounds to include 48 acres. Since then, what is now known as Historic Oakland Cemetery has become the final home to more than 70,000 residents. Among those are celebrated politicians, authors, and athletes and those whose impact has been felt but who are not as well recognized. A few of those residents include Gordon Burton Smith, who helped build the Panama Canal; Andre Steiner, who created the master plan for Stone Mountain; and Sally Connally Hardie, who helped run the National Trust of Scotland. They rest among gardened paths in elaborate mausoleums, exceptional funerary art, humble headstones, and sometimes unmarked graves.
Through engaging narrative, rich photography, archival images and detailed maps, a versatile guide to Atlanta's oldest public cemetery is a great way to tour the cemetery's landscape of remembrance, as well as a unique way to explore Atlanta's history. Original.
To learn about a community's past, the city cemetery is the place to visit. As Atlanta's oldest permanent landmark, Oakland Cemetery holds the past, present, and future history of the Gateway to the South. Established in 1850 as a small municipal cemetery on the southeastern edge of town, Historic Oakland has evolved into 88 acres of art, history, architecture, gardens, and peaceful green space in the heart of downtown Atlanta. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 as a significant example of an historic Victorian-era cemetery, Oakland is the final resting place of more than 70,000 deceased. People of both statewide and national importance have been buried throughout the cemetery's grounds in the past 150 years, including author Margaret Mitchell, golfing legend Bobby Jones, Confederate generals and soldiers, Georgia governors, Atlanta mayors, and ordinary people known only to their families. Historic Oakland Cemetery explores the history of both the cemetery and the people who were laid to rest there. From the famous to the infamous, the legendary to the ordinary, every person buried in the cemetery has a story to tell. For all of its emphasis on the past, Oakland remains an active cemetery, a public park, and an educational resource in which to study lush landscapes and Georgia history.
Old Atlanta may conjure images of southern belles and Civil War ruination, but the full story stretches back millennia, even before the first known residents arrived five thousand years ago. From centuries of Native American settlements that ended with the removal of the Creeks to the rough-and-ready pioneer days, the area was rich in history long before it was called Atlanta. Author Mark Pifer unfolds a complex saga, including forgotten details from the struggles of African Americans and new immigrants, while noting modern locations bursting with tales that predate the City in the Forest's rise amid the treetops.
An award-winning writer explores the patchwork American cultural history of grieving the departed. One family inters their matriarch’s ashes on the floor of the ocean. Another holds a memorial weenie roast each year at a green-burial cemetery. An 1898 ad for embalming fluid promises, “You can make mummies with it!” while a leading contemporary burial vault is touted as impervious to the elements. A grieving mother, 150 years ago, might spend her days tending a garden at her daughter’s grave. Today, she might tend the roadside memorial she erected where her daughter was killed. One mother wears a locket containing her daughter’s hair; the other, a necklace containing her ashes. What happens after someone dies depends on our personal stories and on where those stories fall in a larger tale―that of death in America. It’s a powerful tale that we usually keep hidden from our everyday lives until we have to face it. American Afterlife by Kate Sweeney reveals this world through a collective portrait of Americans past and present who are personally involved with death: obit writers in the desert, an Atlantic funeral voyage, a fourth-generation funeral director―even a midwestern museum that shows us our death-obsessed Victorian progenitors. Each story illuminates details in another, revealing a landscape that feels at once strange and familiar, one that’s by turns odd, tragic, poignant, and sometimes even funny. “Sweeney’s quest for the “why” behind mourning rituals has given us a book in the best tradition of narrative journalism.”—Jessica Handler, author of Braving the Fire: A Guide to Writing about Grief and Loss
In 1884, several leading citizens purchased 577 acres to open Atlanta's Westview Cemetery. The rolling terrain, part of which was a site in the Civil War battle of Ezra Church, became the final resting place for more than 100,000 people. Prominent locals buried here include Grant Park namesake L.P. Grant, author Joel Chandler Harris, High Museum benefactor Harriet High, Coca-Cola founder Asa Candler Sr. and Havertys founder J.J. Haverty. The cemetery's Westview Abbey mausoleum is one of the nation's largest, with more than eleven thousand crypts. Throughout its history, Westview dabbled in other business ventures, including a cafeteria, a funeral home and an ambulance service. And for decades, the cemetery's Westview Floral Company sold flowers to lot owners and local businesses, leading to its own advice column in the Atlanta Constitution. Author Jeff Clemmons traces the complete history of this treasured necropolis.
Although Southern women are often portrayed as belles, the photographic record suggests the true diversity, complexity, and richness of their lives. In their roles as wives, mothers, teachers, pilots, businesswomen, and reformers, among others, women contributed greatly to the growth and development of the region. In Atlanta, they helped remake a small railroad hub into the thriving capital of the New South. The photographs in this book, drawn from the collections of the James G. Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center, depict Atlanta women at work and at play from the mid-19th century to the 1970s. In addition to illustrating womens dramatically changing roles during this period, the volume situates these women within the emerging regional and national contexts of their time.
A hauntingly beautiful travel guide to the world's most visited cemeteries, told through spectacular photography andtheir unique histories and residents. More than 3.5 million tourists flock to Paris's Pè Lachaise cemetery each year.They are lured there, and to many cemeteries around the world, by a combination of natural beauty, ornate tombstones and crypts, notable residents, vivid history, and even wildlife. Many also visit Mount Koya cemetery in Japan, where 10,000 lanterns illuminate the forest setting, or graveside in Oaxaca, Mexico to witness Day of the Dead fiestas. Savannah's Bonaventure Cemetery has gorgeous night tours of the Southern Gothic tombstones under moss-covered trees that is one of the most popular draws of the city. 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die features these unforgettable cemeteries, along with 196 more, seen in more than 300 photographs. In this bucket list of travel musts, author Loren Rhoads, who hosts the popular Cemetery Travel blog, details the history and features that make each destination unique. Throughout will be profiles of famous people buried there, striking memorials by noted artists, and unusual elements, such as the hand carved wood grave markers in the Merry Cemetery in Romania.
A multifaceted history of daffodils and the historic and modern gardens they have called home Since their earliest identification in the mid-1500s, more than twenty-eight thousand hybrid daffodils have been named and registered with the Royal Horticulture Society of England. Daffodils began as wildflowers in the Mediterranean basin, then spread and flourished in Europe's alpine and coastal environments. Sara L. Van Beck, an attentive historian and skilled horticulturist, traces the history of the garden daffodil including its early days in Europe, especially the Netherlands; the importation of flowering bulbs to colonial America; and plant breeding and the dissemination of plants throughout the United States until World War II. Illustrated with nearly two hundred color and black-and-white images, Daffodils in American Gardens examines gardening by era--European beginnings; colonial, federal, antebellum, and Victorian periods; and World War II--with a comprehensive chapter for daffodils in cemetery plantings. Van Beck combines the disparate disciplines of archaeology and plant science to discover and re-create important gardens in the United States. Combining primary research from a variety of rare publications, especially nursery catalogs and seed lists, she integrates old and new scientific botany by correlating older, uncertain scientific terms, common names for the daffodil, and modern taxonomies. Historic and modern botanical illustrations embellish the volume and complement Van Beck's narrative. Case studies of surviving historic gardens from the early Republic era to the twentieth century examine how old daffodils have survived the vagaries of time. Van Beck surveys historic properties in Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. This multifaceted history, examining high style, vernacular, and commercial landscape architecture, is geared toward general gardeners interested in heirloom plants and historic gardens. Moreover, extensive endnotes and a comprehensive bibliography document extensive references for professionals working in historic landscapes preservation and garden restoration.
A trans boy determined to prove his gender to his traditional Latinx family summons a ghost who refuses to leave in Aiden Thomas's New York Times-bestselling paranormal YA debut Cemetery Boys, described by Entertainment Weekly as "groundbreaking." Yadriel has summoned a ghost, and now he can't get rid of him. When his traditional Latinx family has problems accepting his true gender, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself, and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free. However, the ghost he summons is actually Julian Diaz, the school's resident bad boy, and Julian is not about to go quietly into death. He's determined to find out what happened and tie off some loose ends before he leaves. Left with no choice, Yadriel agrees to help Julian, so that they can both get what they want. But the longer Yadriel spends with Julian, the less he wants to let him leave. Praise for Cemetery Boys: Longlisted for the National Book Award "The novel perfectly balances the vibrant, energetic Latinx culture while delving into heavy topics like LGBTQ+ acceptance, deportation, colonization, and racism within authoritative establishments." —TeenVogue.com "This stunning debut novel from Thomas is detailed, heart-rending, and immensely romantic. I was bawling by the end of it, but not from sadness: I just felt so incredibly happy that this queer Latinx adventure will get to be read by other kids. Cemetery Boys is necessary: for trans kids, for queer kids, for those in the Latinx community who need to see themselves on the page. Don’t miss this book." —Mark Oshiro, author of Anger is a Gift
