Founded in 1829 and expanded in 1877, Live Oak Cemetery features many original markers. It is a contributing property to the Selma Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places. It’s noted for the dozen or so Victorian monuments in the cemetery. It earned its name after Colonel Dawson donated 80 Live Oaks and 80 Magnolia trees to be planted in the cemetery.
While not a fully handmade marker, I classify this as a vernacular marker for Eddie Parker (1976-2002) because whoever made this was using readily available materials to create it. This is located in the Douglas City Cemetery, Coffee County, Georgia.
I don’t know much about the church, based on burials in the cemetery, I would guess this church was founded around 1900.
Still, an active cemetery, the Jonesboro City Cemetery highlights a combination of Victorian monuments, handmade markers, and manufactured ones. It also illustrates that it was a segregated cemetery. The Black section sits at the back of the cemetery, and it has several markers showing men and women who were born into slavery but lived past the end of the Civil War.
Carroll County
Grave houses, also known as grave shelters, are a Southern burial practice that likely began in the Appalachian Mountains. Like mortsafes, they served a similar purpose to protect the grave from robbers. It also helped protect the burial site from the elements. Most grave houses have disappeared over the years due to the elements eventually deteriorating the wood.
This is the final resting place of Nannie Lambert Glass, who died in 1899, in Whitesburg City Cemetery.
I visited the cemetery in Savannah for the first time in 2014. It’s a historic African American cemetery that has faced hardship due to poor management. While the lack of care for the cemetery is problematic, the vernacular headstones remind us how much these people were loved.
As of 2021, the owner of the cemetery has passed away, and families are still struggling to get the cemetery cleaned.
