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Decatur Cemetery, Decatur, Georgia

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Six employees maintain the city's 54-acre cemetery. They set up tents for graveside services, dig graves for burials and mow the expansive cemetery grounds. The cemetery is staffed six days a week and is accessible to the public seven days a week until dark. The older section of the cemetery is included in the National Register of Historic Places.

The Decatur Cemetery is a peaceful and beautiful place to walk. Many people enjoy walking their dogs through the cemetery. We ask all visitors to keep their dogs on leashes and stay on the roadway. As an added convenience, the cemetery staff provides baggies for disposal of pet waste. Thank you for helping to keep Decatur Cemetery a pleasant place for all to visit.

Friends of Decatur Cemetery is a volunteer group that works closely with the city to preserve and maintain the cemetery as a historic, cultural and greenspace resource.

Cemetery Walking Tour Brochures Available
The walking tour brochure provides an overview of 40 of the most interesting sites at Decatur Cemetery. Among them are the resting places of three veterans of the American Revolution, a monument standing over a field where numerous orphans are buried, and the final resting place of Dr. Thomas Holley Chivers, who abandoned his medical training for poetry and was described by Edgar Allen Poe as “one of the best and one of the worst poets in America.”

The brochure, in describing the 40 sites, provides a glimpse of Decatur’s history. The 58-acre cemetery dates to 1823 (it’s a full decade older than Atlanta) and provides an interesting overview of how the nation’s attitude about cemetery design (and death) has changed over the years.

The brochure includes a map of the cemetery, lots of color photographs, and a short collection of “cemetery manners” to ensure that the dignity of the site is not compromised. Pick up a copy at the cemetery office or at City Hall.

Decatur City Website



This cemetery is located on 299 Bell Street, Decatur, DeKalb County, Georgia.

Find a Grave



The Decatur Cemetery is a historic graveyard within the city of Decatur, Georgia, United States.

The Decatur Cemetery is the oldest burial ground in the Atlanta metropolitan area, and is believed to have been used even before Decatur's 1823 incorporation.

In 1832, an act by the local legislature created “Commissioners for the Decatur Burial Ground.” Numerous Civil War veterans were buried in the Decatur Cemetery, mostly in the 8-acre (3.2 ha) area now referred to as "The Old Cemetery". A wooden well house, built in 1881 with lattice and shingle details, has been restored by the Friends of Decatur Cemetery (FODC). The well hole has been sealed over with concrete for safety reasons and the house is now used as a gazebo.

The Decatur Cemetery has expanded to 54 acres and contains well over 20,000 graves. A special section exists for burial of cremated remains; the cemetery also contains a pond stocked with fish. This pond is also home to swans, ducks and turtles, and is a stopping place for Canada geese on migration. The cemetery is bordered by a forest of several acres, which borders the Glennwood Estates neighborhood.

The forested ravine east of the cemetery includes a newly completed pedestrian path which winds over a tributary of Peachtree Creek. A small waterfall is just south of the southern bridge.

At the southeast corner of the cemetery there is a grove of giant bamboo, some with trunks over 20 cm in diameter. A short path leads through this grove to the end of the Ponce de Leon Court Historic District.

Wikipedia



The oldest known publicly owned burial ground in metro Atlanta, the Decatur Cemetery is believed to predate the city’s 1823 incorporation. The first written record is an 1832 act of legislature providing “Commissioners for the Decatur Burial Ground.” Expanded many times, the cemetery comprises 58 acres with over 20,000 grave sites. Its appearance dates from an 1881 formal landscaping plan which included well house, wrought iron fencing, and architectural details of Stone Mountain granite. The 7.5 acre “Old Cemetery” contains most 19th century interments and the historic African-American section. Monuments commemorate residents of all social strata, ethnic origins, and veterans of every American war. Here rest Col Milton A. Chandler (1837-1909), legislator & congressman; Dr. Tomas Holley Chivers (1806-1858), physician & poet; Mary A. H. Gay (1828-1918), author of Life in Dixie During the War; the Hon. Charles Murphey (1799-1861), legislator, Congressman, & delegate to the Secession Convention; Col. George Washington Scott (1829-1903), founder of Agnes Scott College; Benjamin F. Swanton (1807-1890), entrepreneur & builder of the Swanton House; and many others who shaped the history of the community.

Historical Marker Database