[honeygrl]

Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery off Fourth Street may contain as many as 3,000 graves, according to a recent study by an archaeological services company. Allen Sullivan/Staff




Ivy grows on a headstone in Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery. Vincent White, project manager of the East Athens Development Corporation, said revised estimates put the number of graves in the cemetery at about 3,000. Work will begin on October to clean up the overgrown roads on the land, he said. Allen Sullivan/Staff


Vincent White, project manager with the East Athens Development Corp., stands at the gate of Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery off Fourth Street. The cemetery, final resting place for many of Athens' prominent African-American citizens, is being restored with help from a state grant. Allen Sullivan/Staff

[honeygrl]

I've lived here all my life and never even knew that graveyard existed.

[Happy2BMe]

Graveyards are fascinating.

Some of the most fascinating I've seen are in Louisiana at the old Catholic graveyards.

I've even seen crypts caved in and the skeletel contents of graves well over two hundred years old exposed.

With the decline in family values and the gradual disintegration of the family being the core of American culture, graveyards are falling into vast disrepair - just as the Family is.

[JennysCool]

This is a tremendous project, but isn't it disheartening that a worthwhile effort like this gets $100,000 of public money, while some researcher out there trying to find a link between french fries and cancer in mice is getting millions? This restoration deserves a LOT more support.

[facedown]

Many of the plots are overgrown.

[RonF]

About 20 years ago my father was director of a Scout camp, up in the mountains in Virginia. My brothers and I went to visit for a week one year after the campers had left for a season. We fished, boated all over the lake, and hiked around the grounds some. Two incidents stand out:

The USGS topo map of the area showed a small graveyard near the top of one of the hills. With some effort, one of my brothers and I hiked up there. We found a double plot fenced in with a cast-iron fence, about 12 x 12. There were two gravestones there dating back from the early 1800's. They were quite legible. There were also footstones with initials on them at the ends of the graves. No signs of vandalism. Two trees were growing out of the graves, one large (I'd say 50 to 100 years old) and one much smaller. We looked at the stones for a while, speculated on what kinds of lives the married couple occupying them might have had spanning the 18th and early 19th century living there on a farm, and left.

Later on I was walking near a maintenance shed that was near the program areas of the camp, but out of the way. While hiking along I stumbled in a rocky area. They were a bunch of sharp rocks embedded in the ground. I'd been walking around without noting them, as it was a rocky area. But my fall caused me to look at them closely. I found a number of them that had names and 18th century dates scratched in them, not too legibly, but there. I asked the caretaker about them. These would be the graves of early inhabitants. I asked him, "Why aren't they being taken care of?" "The families died out long ago," he told me. Still didn't seem right.

[SunkenCiv]

Just adding this to the GGG homepage, not sending a general distribution.

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