Mt. Zion Cemetery
Remembering Black History in Smyrna, Georgia
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Mt. Zion Cemetery
Hawthorne Avenue in Smyrna
It is the 1870’s in small town Georgia. Formerly enslaved residents of areas like Smyrna are looking to create official institutions like churches to help foster growth and identity in the Black community.
Mt. Zion Baptist Church was founded as a Smyrna congregation for Blacks in 1877. Much like Smyrna is a referenced place in the Bible, Zion is a biblical term for the Promised Land. The Promised Land represented spiritual attainment that enslaved and formerly enslaved African Americans hoped for. Baptists have made up the largest percentage of African American religious congregations in Georgia since the late 18th century.
To learn more about African American Baptists in Georgia, click on the link below: African American Baptists
Records show that the congregation was started in 1877; no records exist that state exactly when the church building or cemetery was constructed.
List of known pastors since 1877:
- Reverend Harper Hines
- Reverend George Lloyd
- Reverend Drew
- Reverend Allen
- Reverend Bugg
- 1909 - 1959 Reverend Henry D. Davenport
- 1959 - 1983 Reverend L.C. Malone
- 1984 - Reverend John C. Hearst
- Pastor Richard L. Bush
In 1949, the Mt. Zion Baptist Church congregation was moved to its present location at the corner of Hawthorne and Davenport Streets.
Three other congregations have built churches on the original church site: Smyrna Assembly of God, Word of Life Baptist Church and a Hispanic congregation. These congregations mostly left upkeep of the cemetery to the distanced Mt. Zion congregation and the decedent's families. For many, money and resources were scarce, and the grounds eventually fell into neglect.
In 2007, the church building housing a Hispanic congregation was destroyed by fire. Years went by and the property was put up for sale and bought by a developer who agreed to deed the portion of the land containing the historic cemetery to the City of Smyrna.
First Forays into Restoration
Once the City of Smyrna assumed care over the cemetery grounds; funds and resources could finally be devoted to honoring the memory of those laid to rest at Mt. Zion. Cemetery upkeep is generally divided into two categories: hardscape and softscape. The markers and monuments of a cemetery are referred to as the hardscape. Softscape refers to the landscaping of a cemetery: the trees, bushes and flowers that decorate a cemetery. With so many aspects of the cemetery to address, work began with the help of many hands.
Smyrna Public Works Department employees began cutting back the overgrowth using hand-held tools to avoid damaging markers, and heavy equipment needed to be brought in to handle the removal of large, dead trees.
Here is the final view of the cemetery after the permanent fence was installed. February 2, 2021.
First Image: Stones amidst the saplings, April, 2018. Second Image: Cleared for restoration, July 2020.
A large, all terrain crane was brought in to safely lift and carry large, dead trees over the cemetery grounds to avoid damaging any markers. December, 2018.
Hardscape Restoration
Ashley Shares repairs a tablet style monument in the Oakland Cemetery workshop. Picture from Historic Oakland Foundation.
The City of Smyrna has hired Ashley Shares, Director of Preservation at Historic Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, to complete hardscape restoration work at Mt. Zion Cemetery. She utilized U.S. Secretary of the Interior Standards in the materials and workmanship used to repair the hardscape markers.
For more information on what preservation work at a cemetery entails, click on the link below.
Ashley Shares at work in Mt. Zion Cemetery January, 2021.
Finding the Lost
Many of the people who made up the communities around Mt. Zion Baptist faced extreme socio-economic conditions. Often, the money wasn't available to bury a loved one who died suddenly. Oral history explains that many burials at Mt. Zion were homegrown affairs that did not go through a funeral home. Survey work at the site has shown that many burials are marked by a simple fieldstone, piece of granite, or marble with no markings on who may be laid to rest below. Official records such as funeral home services or burial location on a death certificate have also proven elusive. Cemeteries are places of remembrance where friends and family can go and reflect on those they loved. What can we do when official records don't exist? Technology provides tools that can help us investigate what may lie beneath the cemetery surface.
Ground Penetrating Radar
One of the technologies that can illuminate what is below the surface is Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) Survey. GPR uses electromagnetic waves to penetrate the soil and record information as the electromagnetic waves are reflected back into the transmitter device. This is done in the field by rolling a transmitter device with a power supply over the ground while a computer records the data. The rate and strength at which the electromagnetic waves bounce back to the receiver give clues to objects that might be buried under the ground as well as the types of soils in the area. Edwards-Pitman Environmental, Inc. is a local CRM or Cultural Resource Management firm that aids government and private businesses in environmental, archaeology, GIS, historic resource and other survey and regulation issues. A small crew from this firm was hired to survey Mt. Zion's grounds.
The GPR unit sends radar waves down into the ground and records where and how fast they bounce back to the surface.
In all, the two GPR surveys found evidence of 177 possible burials at the cemetery.
Smyrna Police utilized their equipment to help map the cemetery.
Above-ground Survey
In the winter of 2020 - 2021, a ground survey was done to mark all of the surface depressions that may indicate a sunken grave. We reached out to the Smyrna Police Department Traffic Division who used their survey equipment to help permanently map the location data of these possible graves. This will allow future analysis by digital mapping tools to see if the signature of the sunken graves on the surface match up with the GPR data from below the surface.
Investigate the Results
The map below is interactive. Zoom in to see all labels. Click on the blue squares to open up more information on the marked graves. Move your cursor to see the full extent of the map.
Mt Zion Cemetery GPR Results
Mt. Zion Stories
What Can the Markers Tell Us?
Visitors to Mt. Zion Cemetery will notice a few names seem to appear again and again on the cemetery headstones. "Hanley" ,"Cox" and "Eppinger & Sons" can often be seen incised at the top of the stones. These are the names of Black funeral homes rather than names of the deceased. These businesses offered families a simple hand engraved marker of the decedent's name, life and death dates, along with a simple concrete, tablet style back to adhere the marker to. Many of these markers were probably created by Eldren Bailey, a self-taught artist and sculptor who worked for multiple Black funeral homes in Atlanta. For more on this amazing man, see the page from the Historic Oakland Foundation below:
Eldren Bailey: The Story of a Cemetery Artist
Tympanum
Cemeteries are full of shapes and symbols on markers that reference life, death, and religion. The funeral home markers at Mt. Zion take the shape of a tympanum, a semi-circular arch that was widely used in classical architecture and references the traditional entrance of a church.
Mr. Hester had attained membership in an important Atlanta-area, Black institution despite only living to age 26.
Odd Fellows
Visitors to Mt. Zion will notice that the largest and most elaborate tombstone belongs to W. H. Hester. This marble pulpit -type marker displays a number of symbols which speak to the social life of Mr. Hester.
The secret handshake carved in the oval and the letters "F L T " (Friendship, Love, Truth) inside three links point to the fact that Mr. Hester was a member of the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows. This fraternal organization was started as an off-shoot of a British order by freed Blacks in New York in 1843.
This group combined a Freemasons structure with biblical content in their rituals, as can be seen in the overall pulpit design of the marker with a representation of the Bible carved on top. The Odd Fellows offered their members benefits for illness, burial, disability and widowhood. Fraternal organizations like the Odd Fellows allowed Black citizens to create social institutions that fostered community and fellowship; the Odd Fellows pledged to remain sober, honest, industrious and benevolent, a good husband, a kind father, and a loyal and virtuous citizen. During the late 19th and early 20th century, many parallel fraternal organizations were started by Blacks since white fraternal organizations excluded Black members. The Household of Ruth is the female counterpart to the Odd Fellows.
For more information on the importance of the Odd Fellows in 20th century Black Atlanta, visit: Georgia State University History of Our Streets
Horace and Sylvia Anderson in front of the Ruff house, ca. 1900 courtesy Parker Lowry
The Andersons
Horace and Sylvia Anderson were formerly enslaved by the Ruff family before 1865. Horace is listed in the 1880 Census as a "Farm Worker" and the couple lived on land they did not own near a schoolteacher. This was probably in the area of modern day Elizabeth Street. The Andersons were among the founding members of the Mt. Zion Congregation. Horace's tombstone still stands and it is assumed that Sylvia lies beside him in eternal rest since a 1936 funeral notice in the Atlanta Constitution lists her burial place as the Mt. Zion churchyard.
The Davenport Family
The current marker on Village Parkway and Turpin Road.
Before Rose Garden Hills, the Smyrna area where most African Americans lived was known as Davenport Town. The surname of Davenport first pops up in Smyrna records as the name of one of the city's founding councilmen in 1872. This W. L. Davenport may be the same white man who left the area for Douglas County in 1877. By 1920, there were 5 Black families in the area with the surname of Davenport. Lillie and Henry Davenport were typical of many Smyrna farming families of the time in that they had a large number of children, in this specific case, 9. This growing enclave of Black Davenports is surely where Davenport Town got its name.
How You Can Help
Contact the Smyrna Museum Manager at jeldredge@smyrnaga.gov to see a listing of all the known burials at Mt. Zion Cemetery. If you have any information on those listed or on people you believe are buried at Mt. Zion, please use the above email address to send us your tips, and Smyrna Museum staff will get in touch with you.