Born in Asheville, North Carolina, author Thomas Wolfe’s final resting place is in Asheville’s Riverside Cemetery. His most notable work, Look Homeward, Angel, was a fictionalized version of his life. Wolfe died at the age of 37 of tuberculosis. He is buried next to his parents.
Piney Grove Cemetery is the last vestige of a historic Black community in Buckhead, Atlanta, Georgia. It is now surrounded by condos and within earshot of the Georgia 400 Highway. It’s only accessible by a grassy path along the backside of the condos.
It is believed the community dates back to the 1820s. At one time, the Piney Grove Missionary Baptist Church stood at the top of the cemetery’s hill. A storm destroyed it in 1996.
These aerial photos show how the land was built around the church in the cemetery. The 1993 aerial photo shows how close Georgia 400 is to the church and the cemetery. By 2002, the condominiums come into view around the cemetery.
For the past several years, a dedicated group of volunteers has been trying to reclaim the cemetery from nature. Many of the volunteers have ancestors who once attended the church and have family members buried in the cemetery.
Moses Harshaw (1794-1858) moved to Habersham County from North Carolina in 1822. He moved to the Nacoochee Valley, which is near Helen, Georgia. His wife, Nancy, their seven children, and the people he enslaved settled in the area to farm the land and mine for gold.
By 1837, Harshaw added more land to his holdings and built a home that still stands today. Now known as the Stovall House, the home is now a bed and breakfast in the Sautee Nacoochee Valley.
In addition to being a farmer, Stovall was a lawyer in Clarkesville. He unsuccessfully defended himself six out of seven times when he was charged with assault. His seventh charge never made it to court. One has to wonder if he was a horrible lawyer or if his crimes were so heinous that even being a rich white man could not protect him from being found guilty. It’s probably both.
All enslavers participated in a level of brutality just by participating in the mere act of holding people in bondage. Harshaw was known to be especially brutal. Stories of his treatment were well known across the valley.
In 1850, Georgia made divorce legal. Nancy Harshaw filed for separation on October 7, 1850. The paperwork stated they could not live peacefully together. The divorce was never finalized, but Nancy Harshaw got the last laugh when she had a wooden marker placed on his grave in The Olde Clarkesville Cemetery with the epitaph of “Died and Gone to Hell.”
Information for this post was pulled from the Olde Clarkesville Cemetery website.
I recently came across a response to a post about Moses Harshaw on Facebook that I want to challenge.
The responder was trying to claim that there was no proof that Harshaw was cruel and that he paid the people he enslaved $10 a month. According to the 1850 Slave Census, there are 25 people he holds in bondage. This would mean he was paying $250 a month. That is an unheard-of amount.
Additionally, the poster claimed that Harshaw freed those he held in bondage upon his death. Manumission laws prevented this. The first law was passed in 1818, and variations of it were in place until the Emancipation Proclamation (Source: The Georgia Archives).
The Old Clarkesville Cemetery underwent a restoration project in the ten years I first visited. In the summer of 2014, I documented my first visit. I just went back a couple of weeks ago to see what they have done.
The cemetery was initially the graveyard for the Clarkesville United Methodist Church, which relocated from the grounds in 1881.
While the most infamous resident is Moses Harshaw, the cemetery is the final resting place of Habersham County’s early white settlers. The earliest known burial is Calvin Hanks who was buried in 1834. The last burial was in 1945 for Mary King.
Memorial Day was once called Decoration Day. It adopted its name from the Southern, primarily Appalachian, and Liberian tradition to clean and decorate the cemetery where loved ones were laid to rest. Traditional Decoration Day predates Memorial Day.
Decoration Days usually happen in May but often go later into the summer. Families will gather to clean, place flowers, worship, sing, and eat a meal. For some, this may be a solo family tradition, or they join the church and parade into the cemetery with the congregation, whose arms are filled with flowers. Sometimes, these events may coincide with a family reunion so the living ancestors can gather together to clean and decorate the headstones of their loved ones.
While in the United States, this practice can also be seen across the country in places like Texas, Utah, and Missouri. The Decoration Day celebration is believed to be tied to the Welsh Practice called “Flowering Sunday,” where town members would decorate graves with flowers on Palm Sunday. Other countries have similar practices, such as Mexico’s Day of the Dead, China’s Tomb-Sweeping Festival, and Japan’s Bon Festival.
While Memorial Day is officially separate from Decoration Day, many congregations will also use this time to decorate the graves of veterans. Often you will see cemeteries filled with floral arrangements and American flags.
If you want to read more about Decoration Day, I highly recommend the book by Karen Singer and Alan Jabbour. Their book Decoration Day in the Mountains: Traditions of Cemetery Decoration in the Southern Appalachians does a detailed job of explaining the history of the Decoration Day practice.
Mount Ararat Cemetery was the first burial ground for Black citizens in Nashville, Tennessee. Opened in April 1869, the property was purchased for $5,000 by the Colored Sons of Relief Number One and the Colored Benevolent Society.
Over 15,000 burials are in the cemetery. Many of these are unmarked, but some markers showcase the wealth and prominence of some of the individuals.
