Posted in Beautiful Savannah

There’s a Story Here Somewhere

Posted on by Neal Saye

Walking through Savannah’s Colonial Park Cemetery this morning with HR, we came across this bench.

There has to be a story somewhere. Is the story’s central character Mary Helen Ray, whose name is on the bench?

Or maybe one of the nearly 700 folks who died during a yellow fever epidemic in Savannah: “The most macabre bit of history involves a subtly tweaked fact on a historical marker about the yellow fever. According to the marker, ‘nearly 700’ victims of the 1820 yellow fever epidemic were buried in a mass grave, but historical records allegedly show that exactly 666 people are buried in the grave. Nearly 700, indeed.” savannahnow.com.

Here’s a link to an interesting story about Colonial Park Cemetery: 

https://www.savannahnow.com/story/lifestyle/2021/08/04/savannah-history-cemeteries-colonial-park-yellow-fever-deaths-graves/5476392001/#

Oh, and for extra credit, here is Robert sitting in a bunch of ginkgo biloba leaves at one of the entrances to Colonial Park Cemetery …

That’s probably a story in itself.

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8 thoughts on “There’s a Story Here Somewhere”

  2. Nice piece. Savannah is both a beautiful, and extremely FUN town. We had two friends have a destination wedding there (we were all living in Chicago, at the time. They have since moved there). Great historical piece, Neal. Thanks for sharing!

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  3. Thank you, Neal, for a lovely post sharing a tragic moment in Savannah history. The photos are beautiful! ❤️

    I spent many hours of my childhood in a historic SE Virginia cemetary, climbing a massive magnolia tree, admiring the flowering shrubs planted there, and reading inscriptions on headstones.

    There were a few graves of children. I remember one in particular, a lamb carved in white marble. Though I don’t remember the inscription, I remember the poignancy of the moment I first read it.

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