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."
Part of the grounds was cultivated and planted with live-oak (Quercus virginiana), about a hundred years ago, by a wealthy gentleman who had his country residence here But much the greater part is undisturbed. Even those spots which are disordered by art, Nature is ever at work to reclaim, and to make them look as if the foot of man had never known them. Only a small plot of ground is occupied with graves and the old mansion is in ruins.
The most conspicuous glory of Bonaventure is its noble avenue of live-oaks. They are the most magnificent planted trees I have ever seen, about fifty feet high and perhaps three or four feet in diameter, with broad spreading leafy heads. The main branches reach out horizontally until they come together over the driveway, embowering it throughout its entire length, while each branch is adorned like a garden with ferns, flowers, grasses, and dwarf palmettos.
But of all the plants of these curious tree-gardens the most striking and characteristic is the so-called Long Moss (Tillandsia usneoides). It drapes all the branches from top to bottom, hanging in long silvery-gray skeins, reaching a length of not less than eight or ten feet, and when slowly waving in the wind they produce a solemn funereal effect singularly impressive.
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