by Bonaventure Cemetery is a 160-acre rural cemetery just outside of Savannah in Thunderbolt, Georgia.
It is located on the site of the former Bonaventure Plantation. The first plantation home burned to the ground in the middle of a dinner party in 1771; the replacement home was also destroyed in a fire, in 1804.
Bonaventure originally started as a private cemetery on the plantation, but in 1868, some of the grounds were converted to a public cemetery (though run by a private business), known as Evergreen.
In 1907 the city of Savannah purchased the cemetery and renamed it Bonaventure.
The cemetery came gained notoriety after being featured in the novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. The cover of the book featured the Bird Girl sculpture, and so many tourists trampled over graves to get to it that the sculpture had to be relocated to the Telfair Academy where we were able to see it on our visit there. What’s wrong with people?
The cemetery has 100-year-old live-oaks throughout, and is famed for its funerary art. It was designed as a traditional Victorian cemetery, with the intention that families would not just visit their dead, but picnic and stay for a while. Had we visited earlier in the year, we would have seen the cemetery bursting with azaleas and camellias.
We did a walking tour of the cemetery with a guide who explained the history of the cemetery and some of the symbolism that can be found there.
One of the interesting items she showed us was the Death Bell, pictured here to the left of Charles Mills’ grave marker. In order to prevent people from being buried alive (back in the day when medicine was not quite the science it is today), a string would be tied to the finger of the deceased and attached to a bell at the grave.
If the bell rang, you’d know your deceased love one was not, in fact, dead, and you’d best grab a shovel fast.
The cover photo is of the main gates to the cemetery.
Among the more well known people interred here are songwriter Johnny Mercer and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Conrad Aiken (see photos of their graves below).
