Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta GA

This past weekend, we were in Atlanta for a little while – the weather was so nice and we were really in the mood to get out and walk for a while. Many people in the city go to Oakland Cemetery because it’s a huge greenspace with lovely monuments and landscaping, and a great place to picnic – lots of people there with coolers and even saw one of those big drum grills.

Oakland is so big and historic that they have multiple walking tours each weekend (lots of overview tours plus some Victorian symbolism tours, Women of Oakland tours…) and this past weekend was their first annual Descendant’s Day. There’s even a gift shop at the visitors’ center.

Here are a few of the more interesting things we saw…

This is the monument for Jasper Newton Smith. The story is that he paid a sculptor to make this life-size statue of him, and the artist portrayed him wearing a necktie, which he never wore because of some bad experience he had as a child. Mr. Smith supposedly refused to pay the sculptor until the necktie was chiseled off:

Jasper Newton Smith Monument, Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta GA

Neal Monument, Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta GA

Statue Monument, Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta GA

People leave tees and golf balls at Bobby Jones’ monument:

Bobby Jones Monument, Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta GA

…and others leave coins and other mementos at Margaret Mitchell’s monument:

Margaret Mitchell Marsh Monument, Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta GA

The home where she wrote GWTW is open as a museum.

Part of the Confederate section – about 6900 soldiers are buried at Oakland and a little fewer than half are unknown:

Portion of Confederate Section, Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta GA

Monument to “Unknown Confederate Dead” by T.M. Brady – it’s known as the ‘Lion of the Confederacy’, or the ‘Lion of Atlanta’. At the time it was the largest single piece of marble quarried in the US – the same quarry (in Tate, Georgia) supplied the marble for Lincoln’s statue at the Lincoln Memorial.