Work day to be held at Spring Place Cemetery

Published 12:02 am Thursday, February 20, 2020

The Spring Place Ruritan Club and the Spring Place Historic Township are sponsoring a work day at the Spring Place Cemetery on Saturday, Feb. 29.

This 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 performed by the Cemetery Committee’s perpetual care fund. In many cases, there are no family members left to do this “extra” work and workers hope to remedy this situation on the work day.

Among those interred at Spring Place are 19th century physicians L.P. Bagwell, who lost his life in a house fire in 1899, 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 Civil War fame; an unknown Union soldier from that same conflict and at least 150 other veterans, county officials and local entrepreneurs. Just for the record, Mr. Tilton’s pet parrot is buried in the plot with him, and Charlie Brown’s dog is buried next to him — no, not that Charlie Brown, and it’s Gyp, not 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 that holds an equally special place in Murray County’s history.

For more information, contact Tim Howard at (706) 695-2740 or howard tim@windstream.net.