Located in southwest Atlanta, there is quite a large cemetery lost into a hill of a neighborhood. It’s been identified as the Dudley Cemetery. Based on old obituaries, it seems to have a tie to the Philadelphia Baptist Church due to the frequency of notices that indicated services at the church and burial at the cemetery.
From the base of cemetery, a dozen or so headstones can be seen. There are many depressions in the earth. I would guess over 100 burials are hidden in the hillside.
If you go, don’t trespass. It is privately owned land. I went with someone who knows one of the owners.
Built around 1938, the Philadelphia School is tied to the freedman’s church, Philadelphia Baptist Church. The church was founded in 1875. The land where this school sits was purchased in 1883. Records show there were teachers associated with the church by 1885. Unfortunately, in April 1936, a fire in the schoolhouse spread to the chapel and destroyed both buildings.
Located in the community once known as Rico, the “Old” Rico School was built before 1900 and was in use until 1932 when a new school was built just down the road. It was a four-room schoolhouse with a central hallway. It was turned into a single home dwelling that is now abandoned.
The Rico Scout Lodge served the community of Rico as a general store, post office, Masonic lodge, and a place where the local civic club. Built around 1898 by James McMillan, it served as the main gathering place for locals. In 2019, the owner gifted the building to the city of Chattahoochee Hills.
Built around 1879, William Yates built this Italianate in an area formerly known as Rivertown. By 1893, William Yates fell into financial trouble due to a national financial panic. James Jethro Jones eventually purchased the house from the bank in 1894. The home has been expanded twice.
Completed in 1910, the Herndon Home was the residence of Alonzo Herndon and his family. Herndon was the first Black millionaire in Atlanta and one of the first in the United States. He built his wealth by running several successful barbershops in Atlanta and starting the Atlanta Family Life Insurance Company.
Herndon was born into slavery in 1858 in Social Circle, Walton County, Georgia. After Emancipation, he left Social Circle and began work as a farmhand, and learned how to barber in Jonesboro, Georgia.
He eventually moved to Atlanta, where he began his barbershop business. He helped save a mutual aid association, which eventually evolved into the Atlanta Life Insurance Company.
Atlanta Life Insurance Building on Auburn Avenue
Designed by Adrienne Herndon, a professor at Atlanta University and Alonzo’s first wife, the two-story, 15-room Classical Revival mansion with Beaux-Arts influences was built by local Black craftsmen. It was added on the National Register of Historic Places and designated as a National Historic Landmark in 2000.
Upon his death, Herndon’s son Norris took over Atlanta Life Insurance and built upon his father’s success by turning it into a multi-million-dollar business.
The Herndon family is buried in Southview Cemetery.
Coins left on a grave are left to show that someone recently visited and paid their respects.Alonzo Herndon’s second wifeUpdated to add: This is Sophenie Herndon’s grave. She is Alonzo’s mother and is buried in Herndon Cemetery in Social Circle. The bottom of her headstone says, “Erected by A. F. and Tom Herndon.”
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