Connecting with Landmarks: History of Rose Hill Cemetary (Part 2)

by Dianne Dent Wilcox (diannedentwilcox@att.net )

(Guest Blogger Dianne Dent Wilcox is an expert on the history of Macon and Central Georgia.  She is currently the Humanities department Chair at Georgia Military College.  She and her family reside in Macon.)

The traditional Rose Hill Rambles, started by Calder Payne, give detailed information about sections of the cemetery. I was never able to attend one of Mr. Payne’s tours, but I have read his information. He seemed to know the families who had members buried here on a personal basis, whereas my knowledge comes from the library. I was able to attend a Ramble sponsored by the local history society and hosted by Jim Barfield. I continue to encourage everyone to go on as many Rambles as possible because each person giving one of these tours does it from a unique perspective. This is an overview of the cemetery, rather than a detailed analysis, so it gives more general information and covers a greater geographic area of the cemetery.

So, in 1805, the Ocmulgee River, was the southwestern boundary of the United States. That means that the Rose Hill Cemetery property was still Native American territory in 1805. That’s why in 1806, the new United States government established Fort Hawkins on the east side of the Ocmulgee River. You can see its watchtower from the cemetery. The best view is from a Masonic pulpit sculpture. Fort Hawkins’ tower is just above the tree line as you follow Emery Highway northeast.  In 1820, the U.S. boundary moved from the Ocmulgee River to the Flint River making the land on which Macon was founded available for settlement. The people living around Fort Hawkins knew that the new land was opening, so they held a meeting to plan the City of Macon. Simri Rose attended that meeting. About twenty years later, citizens of Macon approached Rose and asked him to design the cemetery, which is named in his honor.

 

Masonic Pulpit Sculpture

Of course, there were people in this area long before the fort, the city and the cemetery. The Ocmulgee National Monument shows that Native Americans were in this area some 12,000 years ago. Later, around 1540 DeSoto’s expedition came through. There’s a historic marker about DeSoto in Central City Park. By the late 1600s, British settlers came to the area, and in 1690, they established a trading post on what are now the grounds of the Ocmulgee National Monument. That trading post operated until 1715 when Native Americans burned it during the Yamasee War.  Then the United States established Fort Hawkins in 1805, and it functioned as a trading post and military outpost before, during and after the War of 1812. Bibb County is chartered in 1822, and Macon is founded in 1823.

That brings us back to 1840 and Rose Hill. Rose Hill Cemetery is one of the oldest landscaped cemeteries in the United States. Simri Rose collected botanical specimens and planned them, by design, in his carefully planned cemetery. Several of the original plantings are visible in the cemetery.

Rose Hill has unusual burials, too. Families invested in their burial sites. Rose Hill has its own Washington Monument, too. It honors the Washington family of Macon for which the Washington Memorial Library is named. The Dunlap Mausoleum is another area favorite. The Dunlap family home is now the superintendent’s residence at the Ocmulgee National Monument. Built in 1857, the Dunlap House was occupied twice by Federal soldiers during the War Between the States. Just to the right of the mausoleum, down low and adjacent to the street is one of Rose Hill’s unusual graves. It’s the grave of Lieutenant Bobby, a little brown dog who was the mascot of Company C of the 121^st Infantry of the Georgia National Guard. There’s a picture of Bobby online and an article that says he lived, with his master in the Dempsey Hotel. That’s at the corner of Cherry Street and Third Street. Bobby died at age twelve when he fell down an open elevator shaft.  Some other unusual graves are marked with metal monuments. There of those are a few feet down the hill.

Lt. Bobby

             

Connecting with Landmarks:Creating a Tour of Rose Hill Cemetery, Macon, Georgia (Part 1)

Entrance to Rose Hill Cemetery

by Dianne Dent Wilcox
(diannedentwilcox@att.net)

(Guest Blogger Dianne Dent Wilcox is an expert on the history of Macon and Central Georgia.  She is currently the Humanities department Chair at Georgia Military College.  She and her family reside in Macon.)

Welcome to Rose Hill Cemetery, opened in 1840. I began doing tours here around 1995. Teaching high school in private schools, I had more flexibility with curriculum issues than many of my public school colleagues. Because I taught English, which includes research writing, I wanted my students to feel that their research had meaning – that completing the assignment was more important than just checking off a task that they had to complete for school. I decided to connect the students’ research to the area’s history, culture and heritage. In 1989, my eleventh grade American literature students began researching Macon’s War of 1812 Fort Hawkins. Later, in looking for a middle school research project, I learned that the Washington Memorial Library’s genealogy room had files on prominent Macon citizens. The files provided a narrowed research field accessible to middle school students. So, the project developed this way. On a planned field trip day, I brought seventh graders to Rose Hill Cemetery. Upon arrival, I divided the class into three member teams and had each team draw a card from my hand on which they found the name of someone buried at Rose Hill.  Then, carefully placing chaperones on the tops of the hills here, we released the students into the cemetery to gather as much information about their subject as possible. Because I matched the research subjects to the files in the Genealogy Room, I knew, in advance that each student would be able to locate the materials he needed to write the required 2,000 word MLA research paper.

Students loved exploring the cemetery and finding information about their subjects. Some found historic markers; others found only names, birth and death dates, and a select few found only the Woolfolk, etched in stone at a burial site. (Today that site has nice new markers with names and dates on them.) However, when each student went to the library, he found the remaining information to write his paper. We started with classes on twenty-five, and then as the school and the project grew, we began bringing fifty to seventy-five students at the time.

These students have now graduated from college, and when I see them, they still mention the Fort Hawkins and Rose Hill Cemetery projects and tell me how that real research experience increased the value they put on their education, their community and their heritage. I benefited greatly, too. In reading and grading twenty-five to seventy –five Rose Hill research papers per year, I learned a great deal about Rose Hill Cemetery and Macon history. I’m now the Humanities Division Chair for Georgia Military College.  Our largest Rose Hill tour was Spring 2007, when we had 114 people participate. 

We’ve now adopted Shiloh Cemetery, started in 1831 for reclamation, restoration, protection, and student research. My Facebook page, Dianne Dent-Wilcox, is all Georgia history and folklore, all the time.  I invite you to join in the adventures.