Bonaventure Cemetery

Template:Short description Template:Use American English Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox cemetery Bonaventure Cemetery is a rural cemetery located on a scenic bluff of the Wilmington River, southeast of downtown Savannah, Georgia.<ref name="CityNotes" /> The cemetery's prominence grew when it was featured in the 1994 novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt, and in the subsequent movie, directed by Clint Eastwood, based on the book.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> It is the largest of the city's municipal cemeteries, containing nearly Template:Convert.<ref name="CityNotes" />

The entrance to the cemetery is located at 330 Bonaventure Road.<ref name="CityNotes" /> Immediately inside the gates is the large and ornate Gaston Tomb, built in memory of William Gaston, a prominent merchant.

History

The cemetery is located on the former site of Bonaventure Plantation, originally owned by Colonel John Mullryne. On March 10, 1846, Commodore Josiah Tattnall III sold the Template:Convert plantation and its private cemetery to Peter Wiltberger.<ref name=bell>Ease and Elegance, Madeira and Murder: The Social Life of Savannah's City Hotel, Malcolm Bell, Jr. (1992), p. 572</ref> The first burials took place in 1850, and three years later, Peter Wiltberger himself was entombed in a family vault.<ref name=bell/>

Major William H. Wiltberger, the son of Peter, formed the Evergreen Cemetery Company on June 12, 1868. On July 7, 1907, the City of Savannah purchased the Evergreen Cemetery Company, making the cemetery public and changing the name to Bonaventure Cemetery.<ref name="CityNotes">Template:Cite web</ref>

In 1867, John Muir began his Thousand Mile Walk<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> to Florida and the Gulf. In October, he sojourned for six days and nights in the cemetery, sleeping upon graves overnight, this being the safest and cheapest accommodation that he could find while he waited for money to be expressed from home. He found the cemetery breathtakingly beautiful and inspiring and wrote a lengthy chapter upon it, "Camping in the Tombs".

Greenwich Cemetery became an addition to Bonaventure in 1933.<ref>Greenwich Cemetery – SavannahGA.gov</ref>

Operations

Citizens of Savannah and others may purchase interment rights in Bonaventure.<ref name="CityNotes" />

The cemetery is open to the public daily from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. There is no admission fee.<ref name="CityNotes" />

Adjacent to Bonaventure Cemetery is the privately owned and newer Forest Lawn Cemetery and Columbarium.

Department of Cemeteries

The main office of the City of Savannah's Department of Cemeteries is located on the Bonaventure Cemetery grounds in the Bonaventure Administrative Building at the entrance.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Bonaventure Historical Society

The cemetery became the subject of a non-profit group, the Bonaventure Historical Society, in May 1997.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The group has compiled an index of the burials at the cemetery.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Bird Girl

The cover photograph for the best-selling book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, taken by Jack Leigh, featured an evocative sculpture of a young girl, the so-called Bird Girl, that had been in the cemetery, essentially unnoticed, for over 50 years. After the publication of the book, the sculpture was relocated from the cemetery in 1997 for display in Telfair Museums in Savannah. In late 2014, the statue was moved to a dedicated space in the Telfair Museums' Jepson Center for the Arts on West York Street, in Savannah.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Notable burials

Samuel B. Adams, interim Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia<ref name="GHS">Template:Cite web</ref>
Conrad Aiken, novelist and poet
Robert Houstoun Anderson (1835–1888), 2nd Lieutenant US Army, General CSA Army, Chief of Police City of Savannah
Middleton Barnwell, bishop
Edythe Chapman, actress
Nicholas Bayard Clinch (1832–1888), military officer
Hugh Comer (1842–1900), president of the Georgia Central Railway
George Wymberley Jones De Renne (1827–1880), philanthropist and preservationist
Mary Nuttall De Renne (1835–1887), wife of Georgia
Wymberley Jones De Renne (1853–1916), son of George and Mary
Wymberley Wormsloe De Renne (1891–1966), son of Wymberley
William B. Hodgson (1801–1871), diplomat and scholar. Although he arranged with (and paid) William H. Wiltberger for burial lot 13 of section D, he was interred in lot 19 of the same section. The family of Noble Jones, including his son Noble Wimberly Jones, occupies lot 13.<ref>Historic Bonaventure Cemetery: Photographs from the Collection of the Georgia Historical Society, Amie Marie Wilson, Mandi Dale Johnson, Georgia Historical Society (1998), p. 20 Template:Isbn</ref>
Anna Colquitt Hunter (1892–1985), co-founder of Historic Savannah Foundation
Noble Wimberly Jones (c. 1723–1805), physician and statesman
Jack Leigh, photographer, author
Leonard Mackall (1879–1937), historian
Hugh W. Mercer, Civil War Army officer and Confederate general
Johnny Mercer, singer/songwriter and great-grandson of Hugh W. Mercer
James Neill, actor
Edward Padelford (1799–1870), businessman for whom Savannah's Padelford Ward is named<ref name=aasu>A Short Biography of Edward Padelford, Larry Tinker (Armstrong Atlantic State University)</ref>
Marie Louise Scudder Myrick (1854–1934), First Female Owner, Editor, Publisher of a Southern US Newspaper (1895), The Americus Times-Recorder
Sonny Seiler (1933–2023), attorney<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
John Stoddard, president of the Georgia Historical Society and the first president of Evergreen Cemetery Company
Josiah Tattnall Jr. (1765–1803), Senator, General, and Georgia Governor
Josiah Tattnall III (1795–1871), Commodore USN, Captain CSA Navy
Edward Telfair, governor
Mary Telfair, philanthropist and art collector, daughter of Edward<ref>Bonaventure – Telfair Museums</ref>
George Tiedeman, mayor of Savannah<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
F. Bland Tucker, Episcopal minister and hymn writer
John Walz (1844–1922), sculptor
Gracie Watson, famous statue at her gravesite, 6 years old
Claudius Charles Wilson (1831–1863), Civil War Confederate brigadier General
Rosa Louise Woodberry (1869–1932), journalist, educator
Bartholomew Zouberbuhler (1719–1766), early Presbyterian minister<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Spanish–American War veterans from Worth Bagley Camp #10 in Section K. It is the nation's second-largest area dedicated to those killed in the Spanish–American War<ref>Historic Bonaventure Cemetery: Photographs from the Collection of the Georgia Historical Society by Amie Marie Wilson and Mandi Dale Johnson.</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>