“Every man should keep a fair-sized cemetery  

in which to bury the faults of his friends.”  

—Henry Ward Beecher 

Colonial Park Cemetery in May: Hooray for the Greens! 

This walkway in Colonial Park Cemetery was painted en Plein air on a beautiful sun-filled day in May. All I want to say is: “Hooray for the greens!” The color green represents life itself, and I inundated my color palate with several hues of green to complete this painting. And I thoroughly enjoyed spangling them all together on these hallowed burial grounds.  

A good reference book for detailed information on Colonial Park Cemetery is entitled The Old Burying Ground: The History of Colonial Park Cemetery (1999) by Elizabeth Carpenter Piechocinski. A fascinating section for all of us who carefully made our way through COVID-19 covers the history of the several ‘yellow fever’ epidemics that hit Savannah, particularly the three major outbreaks in 1820, 1854, and 1876, causing so much death and thereby creating such widespread public fear and angst. 

The Old Burying Ground offers intriguing history told through the lives of the colonialists buried here: 

In 1738, at the age of 23, James Habersham sailed to Savannah on the Whitaker with his close friend, George Whitefield (see PFS #71). Habersham assisted Whitefield in founding the Bethesda Orphanage and became its first schoolmaster and administrator. He later entered into a mercantile trading partnership and became one of the wealthiest men in Georgia. Habersham was the first Savannah merchant to ship cotton to England. He later became the President of the Georgia Assembly when Georgia’s Colonial Governor James Wright took a leave of absence. Habersham remained a Loyalist to the Crown until he died in 1775, while his three sons became important Revolutionary War Patriots.  

Lachlan McIntosh was the commander of American military forces in Georgia during the American Revolution. He’d moved from Scotland to Georgia in 1736 with his family. His father fought with General James Oglethorpe against the Spanish in the War of Jenkins Ear. Soon after, the elder McIntosh died of wounds from that battle, resulting in Lachlan taking up residence at the Bethesda Orphanage. After accepting a challenge to a duel, McIntosh killed his opponent, was charged with murder, and eventually acquitted. Concerned for his safety, George Washington ordered McIntosh to join him at Valley Forge. 

One of only three signers in Philadelphia of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 from the Colony of Georgia, Button Gwinnett was the man who died in that duel with Lachlan McIntosh. Gwinnett and McIntosh represented opposing factions among Georgia’s revolutionaries. Gwinnett was jealous of McIntosh’s military command. The rivalry between the two ambitious men led to an altercation in which Mcintosh called Gwinnett “a scoundrel and lying rascal” to his face. So naturally, Gwinnett issued his challenge for the duel, where both men were wounded. Gwinnett died of his wounds three days later. 

The only thing we know about the gravesite of William Leigh Pierce is that it’s missing. However, historians are almost certain Pierce is buried within the Colonial Park Cemetery. William Pierce was an aide-de-camp to General Nathaniel Greene during the Revolutionary War and, after the war, moved to Savannah to establish a mercantile business. In 1786, the people elected him to the Georgia House of Representatives, which selected him to represent the state at the Continental Congress held in New York City in 1787. Unfortunately for the posterity of his family name, Pierce was unavailable to sign the Constitution, as he was called away to fight a duel with a business rival named John Auldjo. Alexander Hamilton represented Auldjo as his ‘second’ during the duel and managed to prevent the contest. William Pierce returned to Savannah and died in 1787: with both signature and grave lost to posterity.