Bonaventure Cemetery

The ground was first the Bonaventure Plantation, established by Colonel John Mullryne in 1762. On March 10, 1846, Commodore Josiah Tattnall III sold the property to Peter Wiltberger, who set it up as a private cemetery. The Cultural Landscape Foundation records that James H. Rion was hired in 1850 to lay out the grounds in the rural cemetery style, with tree-lined roads, an ellipse and ring road at the centre, and plots placed over the ruins of the old Tattnall mansion. Its live oaks were planted in rows to form allées. Wiltberger died in 1853, and his son William formed the Evergreen Cemetery Company in 1868; accounts differ slightly on the company's earlier history. The City of Savannah purchased the cemetery in 1907 and renamed it Bonaventure, and neighbouring Greenwich Cemetery was added later, reported as 1933 or 1937 depending on the source. Wikipedia gives a total of about 160 acres.

In October 1867 the naturalist John Muir, then on his long walk to the Gulf of Mexico, spent several nights at Bonaventure and wrote about the experience, including sleeping among the graves.

The first major monument is the ornate Gaston Tomb just inside the gates. Beyond it, the grounds hold Victorian-era sculpture and family monuments, a good part of it by the Savannah sculptor John Walz, who made hundreds of markers for the city's cemeteries. His figure of Gracie Watson, who died aged six, is among the most visited monuments here; stories linking the Bird Girl statue to Gracie are folklore rather than documented history.

Notable people buried here include the songwriter Johnny Mercer, the novelist and poet Conrad Aiken, the photographer Jack Leigh, Georgia governor Edward Telfair and his daughter, the philanthropist Mary Telfair, and Anna Colquitt Hunter, a co-founder of the Historic Savannah Foundation. There is also a section for Spanish-American War dead from Worth Bagley Camp, and a Holocaust memorial near Jewish Circle.

Bonaventure is also known through John Berendt's 1994 book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Its cover photograph, taken by Jack Leigh in 1993, shows a bronze statue called the Bird Girl, designed in 1936 by the Chicago sculptor Sylvia Shaw Judson, who made six original castings. Telfair Museums records that Lucy Boyd Trosdal bought this cast around 1938 for the Trosdal family plot. After the book drew crowds, the family removed it from the cemetery, and it has been on loan to Telfair Museums since; it is a museum piece now, not something you will find at the graveside. Judson's bowls in the figure's hands were meant to hold food or water for birds.

Bonaventure is an active burial ground, so visitors are asked to walk quietly and respect the plots. The Bonaventure Historical Society, which its own website says was founded in 1992, has compiled an index of burials. Check the City of Savannah's cemetery department for current visiting hours and rules. On a private tour, a driver and guide can take you from the Historic District to the cemetery and wait while you wander, with door-to-door pickup at either end.