Colonial Park Cemetery closed to burials in 1853

This ground served as Savannah's second colonial burying ground from about 1750 until burials ended in 1853. The city turned the six acres into a public park in 1896. Along the eastern brick wall, dozens of old headstones hang mounted flat against the masonry. They were shifted there years after the ground closed, leaving the people they name where they were originally laid.

The ground holds the founders, officers, and officials of early Georgia. Archibald Bulloch, the first President of Georgia, is buried here, alongside James Habersham, who served as acting royal Governor between 1771 and 1773. His son Joseph Habersham, Postmaster General under three Presidents, lies nearby. Continental Army Major General Lachlan McIntosh is here, as are Revolutionary soldier and Governor Samuel Elbert, early historian Hugh McCall, miniature painter Edward Greene Malbone, and Colonel John S. McIntosh from the war with Mexico. Another marker belongs to Captain Denis L. Cottineau de Kerloguen, who fought alongside John Paul Jones in the battle between the Bon Homme Richard and the Serapis.

Revolutionary General Nathanael Greene was placed in the Graham vault here following his death in 1786. Over the following century, the exact vault holding his body was forgotten. Searchers finally located his remains in 1901 and moved them out of the park to Johnson Square.

The cemetery also absorbed the dead from repeated epidemics. In 1820, yellow fever killed nearly 700 people in Savannah, including two of the city's doctors who died of the disease while treating others. Many of those victims went into the ground here, and after further outbreaks swept through the city, residents founded the Savannah Benevolent Association in 1854 to care for the families left behind.