Savannah on My Mind: Bonaventure Cemetery 🪦 and the Forsyth Park Fountain ⛲

This week in history: July 14-20, 1870

Map of Georgia in May 1866; courtesy of the Library of Congress

This week, journey back in time with me to July 15, 1870—154 years ago. On this day, my beloved home state of Georgia¹ became the last former Confederate state to be readmitted to the Union—after being the fifth to secede from it. 

Reconstruction was well underway as southerners worked to repair the damage General Tecumseh Sherman had imposed. The Union’s victorious leader had burned his way through Georgia unlike any other state during the Civil War.

But Savannah? Well, that’s a different story.

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Photo by Benjamin Disinger on Unsplash

Sparing Savannah

Upon entering America’s first planned city during his March to the Sea, Sherman was reportedly so impressed with Savannah’s beauty, he couldn’t bear to destroy it. On December 22, 1864, Sherman telegrammed President Abraham Lincoln to offer the city as a Christmas present.

By 1870, Savannah had resumed successful exportation of inland-grown cotton. Freed slaves who chose to stay in the area built churches and schools, making Savannah one of the country’s most historically significant African American cities of the Reconstruction period.

Savannah in 1875; photo courtesy of the Library of Congress

I’ve been to Savannah twice: first, with my Brownie troop in 1982, and again in 2009 with my husband and three children. A few memories stand out.

Foremost: Bonaventure Cemetery.

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Resting Among the Oaks

Bonaventure Cemetery is considered one of America’s most beloved resting places. It gained additional fame from John Berendt’s 1994 novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which was made into a movie in 1997.

The cemetery covers 103 acres of what was once a 600-acre plantation originally settled by English Colonel John Mullryne in 1760. Mullryne built his home atop a bluff overlooking the Wilmington River and named it “Bonaventure”—the Italian word for “good fortune.”

A year after Mullryne purchased the property, his daughter Mary wed Josiah Tattnall of Charleston, South Carolina, which resulted in the transfer of Bonaventure Plantation to the Tattnall family. In 1764, Mary and Josiah welcomed a son, whom they also named Josiah. He would become governor of Georgia in 1801. 

In 1847, Captain P. Wittberger purchased Bonaventure Plantation, as reported by J.N. Wilson in the Library of Congress archived newspaper clipping shown below. Wittberger established Evergreen Cemetery on 60-70 acres of the property as a private commercial enterprise.

Wilson photographed the cemetery sometime between 1870 and 1880. His photos, also stored in the Library of Congress archives, follow this clipping.

Newspaper clipping courtesy of the Library of Congress. (The “sketch” he refers to was not available in the Library of Congress archives—I tried to find it.)