The Spring Place Ruritan Club and the Spring Place Historic Township are sponsoring a cleanup day at the Spring Place Cemetery on Saturday, March 11.
The historic burial ground dates to the 1840s when Murray County was a recent addition to the map of Georgia, and Spring Place was the county seat for an area that included Whitfield, Catoosa and part of Gordon counties in addition to present-day Murray. The cemetery is on Tibbs Bridge Road west of Ga. Highway 225 in Spring Place.
The older section of the cemetery contains a number of old family plots that need more than the regular maintenance provided by the Cemetery Committee’s perpetual care fund. In many cases, there are no family members left to do this extra work and volunteers plan to fix this situation on the cleanup day.
Among those interred at Spring Place are 19th century physicians L.P. Bagwell, who lost his life in an 1899 house fire, and James Allen, who died in the 1860s, as well as legislators C.N. King, R.E. Wilson and V.C. Pickering; talc mining pioneers Samuel Field and W.C. Tilton; educators Lula Gladden and Pauline Ogletree; Col. William Luffman of Mexican and Civil War fame; former slaves Isaac and Patience Venable; an unknown Union soldier from 1864; at least 200 other veterans; several former county officials; and local entrepreneurs.
Just for the record, Mr. Tilton’s pet parrot is buried in the family plot, and Charlie Brown’s dog is buried next to him — no, not that Charlie Brown. This Charlie Brown’s dog was Gyp instead of Snoopy.
The work day will begin at 9 a.m. and all who are willing and able to help are invited to bring rakes, clippers, loppers, shovels, a garbage bag or two, maybe even a saw or a wheelbarrow to pitch in and beautify this special spot with an equally special place in local history.
A self-guided tour map of the burial ground is available on site, and a DVD that contains the stories of those buried there is available from the Cemetery Committee. For more information about the work day or to order a video, contact Tim Howard at (706) 695-2740 or howardtim@windstream.net.