Antebellum Cemetery Trivia

How about a cemetery trivia question? We haven't had one of those in a while. This is a cemetery founded in the 1850s. It's also the only cemetery where a Democrat (as opposed to a Whig) gave the dedication address before the Gettysburg Address (so far as I know).  I don't know as that will be much of a hint. The Italianate entrance house may be a useful hint for someone -- but even if not, that reminds me that I've been thinking for a while that I need to talk sometime about the southern architecture of the 1850s that was modeled on Italian Renaissance architecture.  Talk about the Machiavellian Moment! (How's that for a reference to a book we used to hear a lot about, but haven't recently?)  But seriously, I'm interested in the architecture that was designed to recall the renaissance and how those ideas correlate with the ideas of southern judges in the 1850s. (And now that we have the cemetery identified, here's the Laurel Grove dedication address.).

Comments

[cpm]

It's the Laurel Grove Cemetery in Savannah, GA. Democrat Henry Rootes Jackson (U.S. district attorney, minister to Austria, Mexican War veteran, newspaper editor, member of the prosecution team in the slave ship Wanderer case, sometime poet, and brigadier general in the Confederate army) spoke at the dedication. You can read his Tallulah: And Other Poems at http://books.google.com/books?id=dscTAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

[Alfred Brophy]

Very, very nicely done CPM. That was a lot harder than it looks, because I don't know how many images there are of that house as part of the Laurel Grove Cemetery. (The Spanish moss might have been a good hint.) And what I had not realized when I went in search of Laurel Grove Cemetery is that there are two of them in Savannah -- Laurel Grove South was founded for people of African descent and Laurel Grove North was founded for white people. Down the road I hope to post a few more pictures of the two Laurel Grove cemeteries.