Newnan's Historic Colored Cemetery AKA Farmer Street Cemetery

Brief history:

            The Farmer Street Cemetery, historically called “Newnan’s Colored Cemetery” is the burial place of the earliest African Americans of Newnan. It is located in the currently named Cole Town District in the eastern part of the  city of Newnan, situated between Farmer Street and Cole Street, but this area is also adjacent to the African American community that is historically known as Chalk Level, an early Black community that lay east of Newnan’s corporate limits. In the late 1800s, the cemetery land was referred to as “the colored cemetery” by the local citizens, but was forgotten by them overtime; however, it has been documented throughout Newnan’s city council archives as the “colored cemetery”. In 1999, this area that covered approximately 4.4 acres would be reidentified as an abandoned cemetery based on depressions and probing, finding approximately 249 burials, and being bordered on the east by Farmer Street, it has become more recently known as the Farmer Street Cemetery. 

            February of 2000, a city council appointed commission was formed in order to research the cemetery’s history. Archival research was conducted, a plan of preservation drafted, and a physical cleanup of the area performed. A marker had been previously found covered under a growth of ivy on the edge of the property with the inscription Charlie Burch, November 20, 1869, son of A.B. (Abner B.) and Eliza Burch, both of whom were former slaves of the area. This dates the Farmer Street Cemetery as being at least 150 years old, and the oldest African American cemetery in Newnan. 

            The two oldest African American congregations in Newnan were the Newnan Methodist Episcopalian Church, established in the 1840’s, and Mount Vernon Baptist Church, established in the 1860s. Both are located in Chalk Level, yet neither have graveyards at their locations; however, printed documentation was found that both churches did pay a sexton for digging graves in the “colored cemetery”. Abner B. Burch, the father of Charlie Burch, was a deacon at Mount Vernon Baptist Church. His son’s tombstone was the 1869 tombstone that was found hidden under ivy at the Farmer Street Cemetery. In 1880, Sandford Huckaby, publicly thanked both the M E Church for the sum of $13.40 and the Baptist church for $3.76. He is also mentioned a decade later, still grave digging for the colored cemetery. This was also where Freedmen and their families were buried, and given the number of 249 burials found, it’s highly probable this was in fact the common burial place among the slaves of the area. 

            In May 1883, the historic Newnan newspaper commends the colored people of Newnan for putting their cemetery in order and by June of 1883, another article reported that there were “thirty-eight interments in the Newnan cemetery for the colored people” so far that year. Obituaries have recently been found in these early Newnan newspapers that list specific colored citizens by name and interred into the colored cemetery; a preacher from the M.E. Church, a barber, and a nurse. Even a colored Confederate veteran has an obituary and since city ordinance deemed it unlawful to bury outside of the public burial places within the city limits, he is thought to be buried at Farmer Street Cemetery as well. 

            An article printed in 1884 refers to the “colored cemetery” as being so “crowded that old graves are opened again for new burials and that the old cemetery should be closed and a new one opened about one mile from the corporate city limits”.  In 1893, the city purchased ten acres from a “Miss Mary Bolton, lying just beyond Chalk Level”, with plans to “convert the same into a cemetery for colored people”. The article states the price paid for the land per acre and that the old cemetery will be closed up. A few months later, a city ordinance was printed in the newspaper, stating that “on the 21st day of August a notice is hereby given that on and after the first day of December 1893 the colored cemetery, in the eastern portion of the city, will be closed, and no more burials will be permitted in the boundaries of said cemetery”. The African American community would no longer be able to bury in their public cemetery, and this new cemetery would become what is known today as Eastview, one of its earliest burials being of the colored sexton Sanford Huckaby himself in 1894.

            For more than 60 years, African Americans would be interred into the Newnan Colored Cemetery- prominent ministers, successful businessmen, nurses, and even a “Colored Confederate Veteran”. But even the not so prominent- Slaves. They would bring their loved ones to be buried in a place to rest in peace from the bondage of this world. Without the backbreaking contribution of these men, women, and children, Newnan would not have had the wealth that it did. Many of these slaves helped to build the beautiful homes in the historical downtown area that give Newnan its nickname as “The City of Homes”. When alive and enslaved, many of these people helped build the railroads, the bridges, and the overall infrastructure of Newnan..

            This cemetery is potentially a 200 year old burial ground that was in use until 1893 and the events that transpired during that time, from Newnan’s dependency on slave labor during the booming cotton industry, through the Civil War era and the decades of freedman comeuppance that followed. This place has many bodies that are buried here of the African American race, and the prominent members of their communities. Especially the likes of Nelson Thurman, a colored Confederate Veteran, that went to war with his master’s sons and physically brought their wounded bodies home where they were buried. He was the Porter for Newnan’s Virginia House Hotel until his death in 1887. This cemetery holds the archeological and anthropological information that would pertain to early African American culture in Newnan as far back as 1830, the likes of which is currently in Newnan nowhere to be found. Slaves should not be forgotten just because they were considered property. For almost 200 years, the earliest history of African American life here in Newnan has still only just begun to be acknowledged, and the existence and protection of this cemetery is a key component of its preservation. We commemorate and honor the early African American people of Newnan by acknowledging their history, establishing and preserving their culture, and allowing them to stake a claim through their contribution to Newnan’s heritage.