How a city forgets the dead
By Elliot James Fernandez
On the other side of the tracks, behind Terminal Station in downtown Macon, Georgia lies the old industrial district. This is the once thriving area of commercial affairs that build the historic Southern town, just 80 miles south of Atlanta.
The roads are well kept, the lawns are manicured, but in some places it seems like no one is there and time stands still.
Many of these now vacant and repurposed buildings are from the early to late 1800s. Their weathered brick and failing facades show the remnants of the old ice house, the coal yard, and the Ice cream factory.
“(People) probably think it’s still the scary part of town,” said Leah Patterson, who along with her husband Brooks are possibly the only formal residents of this industrious part of town.
The young couple owns Prodigy Woodworks, a company building commercial and custom furnishings.
They live and work in this district.
About two streets down and one block over from their business stands the Old City Cemetery. It was Macon’s first municipal cemetery located on the edge of town.
Near to the date when the city was founded, the cemetery operated from 1825 to 1840.
Spanning approximately four acres, some of Macon’s first citizens are buried in this hollow ground. All of the graves face east to receive the first casts of light at daybreak.
This is a historic tradition and shows the cemetery’s age.
At nearly 200-years-old, the space has largely been forgotten and the grounds are failing in many areas.
Where there are hundreds of burial sites, only a handful of headstones still remain today. Many of them destroyed by vandals, or left to dust when the historic site was decommissioned by the city.
In 1840, the cemetery halted its interments, when the larger and master planned Rose Hill Cemetery was opened off of Riverside Drive.
By this time, Macon’s population had outgrown the Old City Cemetery. The community needed more space to keep up with burial demands and a space large enough to sustain the longevity of time.
Given that this was 19th century America, death and laying to rest the deceased was a much more common affair.
The aged burial ground has faced several bouts of neglect in city history. In the late 1800s, a substantial number of bodies were exhumed and reburied in Rose Hill.
It was part of Victorian society to keep your family together in death, buried side by side. Many families wanted their ancestors to be buried in the new family plots located off the Ocmulgee River.
With the loss of interments and lack of community visitation, the Old City Cemetery transformed into an overgrown, haunted and ramshackled boneyard.
The weed strewn cemetery caught community attention on several occasions, but it was the clean up of 1963 that has had the most lasting effect.
In an article titled “High Heels Hunt Graves,” the Macon Telegraph reports in 1963 on a small group of community women who went to the cemetery with the mission to located old graves, piece together broken headstones and strengthen failing or debilitated family plots.
Inspired by their efforts, today the Old City Cemetery is now at least mowed on a regular basis. This is saying the most.
“It’s still a maintenance issue,” said Richard Gerbasi, cemetery director for the City of Savannah.
The director said that cemeteries need perpetual care. The lawns need to be manicured, the flowerbeds worked, headstones and structures conserved. This maintenance comes at an often high cost.
Gerbasi said cemeteries are tough, because they only have a certain amount of revenue. They are mostly nonprofit.
“It all comes down to money,” said Susan Gordon, director of Riverside Cemetery in Macon. “It’s an expensive venture (to keep a cemetery),”
When a cemetery goes out of commission there is no longer a steady flow of income to support maintenance costs. However, the upkeep never stops. There is a constant need to maintain, even after the final body is laid to rest.
According to Gerbasi, if it is a public cemetery, it is a little easier.
“You always have a general fund,” he said. However, the fund may not be large enough to meet all the needs of the cemetery.
This also does not mean that the city is responsible for the beautification of the cemetery.
Today the Old City Cemetery is not as lovely as it once was. There are remnants of once landscaped grounds, though no florals or decorative plantings exist. Only a parade of cryptic looking cherry trees still surround the property today.
Unfortunately, the cemetery is not necessarily a pretty place, despite its historical importance to the city.
Additionally it seems like no one in the community knows that this original cemetery exists.
On the reverse, Rose Hill Cemetery still operates as a well-maintained park and receives some of the highest levels of tourism.
Visit Macon, the city’s tourism bureau, does not publicize the Old City Cemetery in their recommended itinerary list.
“Its not forgotten to us,” said Brooks Patterson, who often walks with family through the cemetery.
They occasionally see a city tourist, who knows about the cemetery, visiting the site to take pictures. The Pattersons also are the cemetery watch dogs, chasing off any riff raff disturbing the dead.
Sometime ago, a man with a metal detector and shovel was digging through the graves. The Pattersons made sure to get him out of there.
“That cemetery, it comes with the heritage (of the city),” Brooks Patterson said.
Macon tourism maps stop before getting to the industrial area, according to Leah Patterson. They would like to see the tourism in this area increase and have regular visitation at the Old City Cemetery.
Gordon said that more people come to visit and share knowledge about the site, the better off the cemetery is going to be.
Leah Patterson recommends that the city install an education plaque at the site, giving visitors more information on the cemetery’s history and its significance to the city.
To Gerbasi, this is the catch 22. Cemeteries need to be beautified to keep their attraction of the community. However, this comes with more added costs.
“For everything you plant, you need to maintain,” he said.
He suggests that the creation of cemetery commissions and friends groups are good and efficient ways to involve community members in the conservation process of historic cemeteries.
“Your city has to embrace (the cemetery),” Gerbasi said.
According to the cemetery director, cemeteries are green spaces. They are parks.
They cost a lot of money to maintain, however he said that they should be maintained. A good push from the community helps.
“The cemetery tells a story… the markers tell a story,” Gerbasi said.
