Atlanta's Cemetery Mysteries Part 1: The Akridge Family Cemetery
By Ashley Shares, Director of Preservation, Historic Oakland Foundation
Atlanta is home to many cemeteries. A few, like Oakland, have remained a prominent part of the city’s culture; however, most are known only to a few family members or owners of whatever property the cemetery now rests on. And, unfortunately, some have been forgotten entirely. This is the first of a series of blog posts for the Atlanta Cemetery Network that will peel back the heavy curtains of history that have long covered these forgotten sites.
Since 2020, members of the City of Atlanta’s Urban Design Commission and I have catalogued various burial places in Atlanta. Through a tedious process, we’ve identified five ways to determine the locations of these sites:
Findagrave: a crowd-sourced website where individuals post photos, inscriptions, and other data about burials
Fulton County GIS: a database used to search for property codes associated with cemeteries
Georgia Department of Transportation: houses a compiled list of cemeteries
Franklin Garrett’s cemetery surveys
Fulton County death certificates/death extracts
These resources have helped us piece together the stories of each Atlanta cemetery. Sadly, sometimes Findagrave only lists a cemetery but no location. This is often because the only evidence of the cemetery’s existence is a reference in a death certificate. One such place was the Akridge family Cemetery. With little information to go on, I turned to other sources to discover the location and more information.
90 years ago, in February 1931, Atlanta Historian Franklin Garrett surveyed and recorded the Akridge Family Cemetery. He described its location as follows: West side of Chapel Road between Simpson Street and Bankhead Avenue. Today, Bankhead Avenue is now Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway and Simpson Street is now Joseph E Boone Boulevard. Chapel still exists. Through the Fulton County Tax database, I located a property in that general area with a cemetery code. It was a vacant lot on a dead-end street. I also found references to the site in several obituaries in the AJC with descriptions linking the family homestead to the same location.
Additional documentation regarding the site of the family cemetery can be gleaned from Tax Digests dating back as far as 1855. These digests record details of land ownership including acreage, use, and location. In this case the family homestead was in the 14th District- portions of land lots 141, 142, 143, and 147. Mason and Turner Ferry Road, later Bankhead Highway, and later Donald Lee Hollowell runs through those land lots.
The final verification that this was indeed the Akridge Family Cemetery was a site visit. Franklin Garrett described the cemetery: “The Akridge graves are surrounded by a rock wall about 3 feet high and measuring about 25 by 60 feet. 25 graves are visible within the enclosure, none of which bear inscribed markers. Outside of the wall are approximately 13 visible graves. Three of these bear inscribed markers.” After hiking through a vacant lot and cutting back extensive Kudzu, an obvious rock wall could be seen. It matched the dimensions that Garrett stated, but no grave markers could be found outside the enclosure. Up until very recently there was an apartment building adjacent the cemetery and there was considerable trash inside and outside the stone wall, so it is possible the markers were removed or are buried now. At this point, there is no doubt of the exact location of the Akridge Family Cemetery.
But who was buried there? Only three graves were known by Garrett and 7 are listed on Findagrave. leaving about 28 unknown.
Check back next month for part II, where I attempt to discover just WHO is buried at the Akridge Family Cemetery.
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Sources
1855, 1869, 1872 Fulton County Tax Digests
1860 Federal Census
Atlanta Journal Constitution