KEVIN SCOTT OLER PHOTOGRAPHY

Bonaventure cemetery is located on the site of a plantation originally owned by John Mullryne. On March 10, 1846, Commodore Josiah Tattnall, Jr., sold the 600-acre (2.4 km2) Bonaventure Plantation and its private cemetery to Peter Wiltberger. Major William H. Wiltberger, the son of Peter, formed the Evergreen Cemetery Company on June 12, 1868. On July 7, 1907 the City of Savannah purchased the Evergreen Cemetery Company, making the cemetery public and changing the name to Bonaventure Cemetery... In 1867 John Muir began his Thousand Mile Walk to Florida and the Gulf. In October he sojourned for six days and nights in the Bonaventure cemetery, sleeping upon graves overnight, this being the safest and cheapest accommodation that he could find while he waited for money to be expressed from home. He found the cemetery even then breathtakingly beautiful and inspiring and wrote a lengthy chapter upon it, "Camping in the Tombs."

Also known as: Angels of Bonaventure