The Old City Cemetery, also known as Linwood Cemetery, is a cemetery on what is now Linwood Boulevard, in Columbus, Georgia. It dates from 1828, when the town of Columbus was founded, or before. It appears in surveyor Edward Lloyd Thomas's original plan for the city. The cemetery consists mostly of rectangular family plots bordered by iron fences or walls made of brick or granite, accessed by a main east–west corridor and perpendicular lanes. It includes both simple and elaborate tombstones, some displaying Egyptian Revival or Gothic styles.
The cemetery was given the name "Linwood" in 1894 by city council resolution, probably to honor Columbus author Caroline Lee Hentz whose works include Ernest Linwood, an 1856 book.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
According to its 1978 nomination, the majority of prominent Columbus persons are buried there. Its burials include more than 200 Confederate Army soldiers representing every state in the Confederacy.
Thomas's own son was an early burial, as he died and was buried in the cemetery in 1828 while Thomas was amidst his work surveying, but apparently the grounds include earlier marked and unmarked graves of "'early traders, river people, and Indians.'"
Notable burials James Abercrombie (1792–1861), US Representative Henry L. Benning (1814–1875), American Civil War CSA general for whom nearby Fort Benning was once named (currently named after CPL Fred G. Benning) Mark Harden Blandford (1826–1902), CSA Congressman Absalom Harris Chappell (1801–1878), US Representative Peyton H. Colquitt (1831–1863), Civil War Confederate officer Walter T. Colquitt (1799–1855), US Senator Martin Jenkins Crawford (1820–1883), US Representative and CSA Congressman Noble Leslie DeVotie (1838–1861), founder of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity Thomas Flournoy Foster (1796–1848), US Representative
Hines Holt (1805–1865), US Representative Porter Ingram (1810–1893), CSA Congressman Alfred Iverson Sr. (1798–1873), US Representative and Senator James Johnson (1811–1891), Georgia Governor Seaborn Jones (1788–1864), US Representative
Thomas M. Nelson (1782–1853), US Representative Dr. John Stith Pemberton (1831–1888), formulator of Coca-Cola Pleasant J. Philips (1819–1876), Civil War Confederate general Paul Jones Semmes (1815–1863), Civil War Confederate general Francis Orray Ticknor (1822–1874), doctor and poet
References
External links
Historic Linwood Cemetery est. 1828 at Columbus Consolidated Government (CCG) Department of Public Works' Cemetery Division Cemetery Records Database at CCG Public Services Department Cemetery Records Dolores Autry Linwood Cemetery Collection at Columbus State University Archives