Bonaventure Cemetery
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Bonaventure Cemetery, in Savannah, Georgia, is located on the site of a plantation originally owned by John Mullryne, whose daughter Mary married Josias Tatnall, Sr. The wife of Tatnall's son, Harriet Fenwick Tattnall, was buried on the plantation in 1802. The plantation was converted to a cemetery in 1868, and was originally called Evergreen Cemetery; its name was changed to Bonaventure Cemetery in 1907.
The cemetery became famous when it was featured in the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt, and in the movie, directed by Clint Eastwood, based on it. The book's cover photograph, taken by Jack Leigh, featured an evocative sculpture of a young girl that had been in the cemetery—essentially unnoticed for over 50 years—and which has come to be known as the "Bird Girl". The original sculpture had been placed on the family plot of Lucy Boyd Trosdal. After the publication of the book, it was donated to Savannah's Telfair Museum of Art to avoid the disturbances that tourists wanting to see it at the cemetery were causing.
There are two burial sections:
[edit] Old Bonaventure Cemetery
- The Bird Girl statue once stood here on the Trosdal family plot
- Conrad Aiken
- Edythe Chapman
- Hugh W. Mercer
- Johnny Mercer
- Edward Telfair (1735-1807)
- Nobel Wymberley Jones (1723/4-1850)
[edit] New Bonaventure Cemetery
- Shooting victim Danny Hansford, notable for his role in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
Bonaventure Cemetery also includes two modern extensions, Forest Lawn Memory Gardens and Greenwich Cemetery, which are contiguous.
