Colonial Park Cemetery Informations

Colonial Park Cemetery (locally and informally, Colonial Cemetery) is a historic cemetery located in downtown Savannah, Georgia. It became a city park in 1896.

The cemetery was established in 1750, when Savannah was the capital of the British Province of Georgia, last of the Thirteen Colonies. By 1789 it had expanded three times to reach its current six acres at Abercorn Street and East Oglethorpe Avenue. Savannah's primary public cemetery throughout its 103 active years, its previous names have included the Old Cemetery, Old Brick Graveyard, South Broad Street Cemetery, and Christ Church Cemetery. Burials ceased in the cemetery in 1853.

Originally built as the burial ground for the Christ Church Parish, in 1789 it became a cemetery for Savannahians of all denominations.The cemetery was closed to burials in 1853, some eight years before the start of the American Civil War, so no Confederate soldiers are buried there. After Union troops occupied Savannah on December 24, 1864, the graveyard was used to quarter some horses. Soldiers allegedly damaged or defaced some of the stone markers.

More than 700 victims of Savannah's 1820 yellow fever epidemic are also buried here.

The remains of major general Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) reposed in the cemetery's Graham vault between 1786 and 1901, at which point they were reinterred in Johnson Square. His remains had shared the vault with those of John Maitland, his archrival in the Revolutionary War. Maitland's remains were returned to his native Scotland in 1981.

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