Bonaventure Cemetery Informations

Bonaventure Cemetery is a rural cemetery located on a scenic bluff of the Wilmington River, east of Savannah, Georgia. The cemetery became famous when it was featured in the 1994 novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt, and in the movie, directed by Clint Eastwood, based on the book. It is the largest of the city's municipal cemeteries, containing nearly 160 acres (0.65 km2).

The entrance to the cemetery is located at 330 Bonaventure Road. Immediately inside the gates is the large and ornate "Gaston's Tomb".

The cemetery is located on the site of a plantation originally owned by John Mullryne. On March 10, 1846, Commodore Josiah Tattnall, Jr., sold the 600-acre (2.4 km2) Bonaventure Plantation and its private cemetery to Peter Wiltberger. Major William H. Wiltberger, the son of Peter, formed the Evergreen Cemetery Company on June 12, 1868. On July 7, 1907 the City of Savannah purchased the Evergreen Cemetery Company, making the cemetery public and changing the name to Bonaventure Cemetery.

In 1867 John Muir began his Thousand Mile Walk to Florida and the Gulf. In October he sojourned for six days and nights in the Bonaventure cemetery, sleeping upon graves overnight, this being the safest and cheapest accommodation that he could find while he waited for money to be expressed from home. He found the cemetery even then breathtakingly beautiful and inspiring and wrote a lengthy chapter upon it, "Camping in the Tombs."

Citizens of Savannah and others may purchase interment rights in Bonaventure.

The cemetery is open to the public daily from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. There is no admission fee.

Adjacent to Bonaventure Cemetery is the privately owned and newer Forest Lawn Cemetery and Columbarium.

The main office of the City of Savannah's Department of Cemeteries is located on the Bonaventure Cemetery grounds in the Bonaventure Administrative Building at the entrance.

The cemetery became the subject of a non-profit group, the Bonaventure Historical Society, in May 1997. The group has compiled an index of the burials at the cemetery.

The cover photograph for the best selling book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, taken by Jack Leigh, featured an evocative sculpture of a young girl, the so-called Bird Girl, that had been in the cemetery, essentially unnoticed for over 50 years. After the publication of the book, the sculpture was relocated from the cemetery in 1997 for display in Telfair Museums in Savannah. In late 2014, the statue was moved to a dedicated space in the Telfair Museums' Jepson Center for the Arts on West York Street, in Savannah.

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