Garden Cemeteries become popular in the late 1800’s. They were a place where people gathered to spend a Sunday afternoon, picnicking with family and friends.
Since Atlanta was a railroad center, the Civil War brought thousands of ill and wounded to her doorstep for medical treatment.
The need to bury 7,000 causalities, lead to the rapid expansion of the main cemetery.
Just blocks from down town, you get the view of more than one type of obelisk:
Victorians used the size and expense of their final resting place to further advance their social standing.
The Marsh family mausoleum has two bronze urns cast at New York’s Gorham Foundry, the country’s first art foundry.
Oakland has 55 mausoleums and thousands of memorials and statutes honoring the deceased.
Although he married twice and had six children, he is the only one interred in this tomb. Most references only talk to his real estate investments…they don’t mention his empire was built by keeping the proceeds from selling a Plantation he had no legal authority to control.
 |
| Jasper Newton Smith |
This brick structure is a faux vault over a solider’s grave.
 |
| E.Taylor Barrel Vault |
Tree motifs can be found in most cemeteries, representing Woodmen of the World or Modern Woodmen of America. An Insurance Society which provided grave markers.
Margaret Mitchell Marsh, author of Gone With the Wind, is buried here:
 |
| Out in the Rain |
Made by L.J.Mott Iron Works of New York, this fountain is a replica of one unveiled at the 1876 U.S. Centennial in Philadelphia. It cost the city $100 in 1913 but it’s restoration in 2008 cost $10,000.
This image of Niobe, Greek mythology that personified grief, adorns the Gray plot. James R. Gray came to Atlanta in 1879 to practice law but ended up acquiring a controlling interest in the Atlanta Journal, serving as its president and editor until his death in 1881.
Dr. Fendall D. Thurman and his bride Mary Glover Thurman arrived in Atlanta in 1855. His dental practice made him one of the wealthiest pioneer families in the South. Dr. Thurman died in 1896; their only child died at the age of five in 1865. Mary lived alone with her maid and died a wealthy woman at the age of 87 in 1916. She was known as the Angle of Atlanta for giving her trophy flowers to hospitals.
 |
| The Angel of Atlanta |
One of the more unusually graves belongs to Bobby Jones. First and only amateur golfer to win the grand slam: the U.S.Open, the U.S.Amateur, the British Open and the British Amateur, all in 1930. His family made the plot into a putting green complete with a cup to putt into. Golfers often pay tribute to him on their way to and from the Masters, leaving signed golf balls or tees.
Although this feels like a Victorian sculpture, it is a modern memorial from a loving husband, Gerald Fazzari to the wife, Deborah Landis, he lost to breast cancer:
City of the dead mirrors the city of the living:
