Utoy Cemetery Listed in the National Register of Historic Places
GOOD NEWS! Utoy Cemetery was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on February 23, 2015.
Please refer to the Georgia DNR Historic Preservation Division’s Press Release, included below.
We were approved for inclusion on the Georgia Register of Historic Places on June 10, 2011-almost four years ago.
Thanks to Malcolm McDuffie, VP-Operations, who prepared the documentation, Lt. Col. Perry Bennett, Past-President, and Terry White, VP-Historian, for their invaluable contributions to the very complex application package.
We are all elated.
The non-profit Utoy Cemetery Association, Inc. is now seeking tax deductible contributions of $4,550 to complete the Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping of the cemetery and the unmarked graves discovered during the 2014 Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) survey.
The Association has a Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Utoy-Cemetery-Association-Inc/114911985187909
Warm regards,
Martha Peace- President
Utoy Cemetery Association, Inc.
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Following is the Georgia DNR Historic Preservation Division’s Press Release:
Utoy Cemetery Listed in the National Register of Historic Places
ATLANTA (March X, 2015) – Utoy Cemetery, located on Cahaba Drive, SW, Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on February 23, 2015. The nomination was sponsored by the property owner, the Utoy Cemetery Association, Inc.; members of the association prepared the nomination materials.
The Creek Land Cession of 1821 opened the area that would become the city of Atlanta to settlement. In the early decades of the 19th century, this area was sparsely populated. The cemetery is important for its association with early white settlement in the Atlanta area, then called Marthasville, and is among the few intact historic resources from the early 19th-century in the city.
Utoy Primitive Baptist Church was constituted on August 15, 1824, with 11 founding members. In the summer of 1828, the congregation moved one-and-a-half miles west of its original location and established a cemetery. The antebellum church building has been altered and is not included in this nomination.
The cemetery is also important for its collection of grave markers that are representative of early 19th- to mid-20th-century markers found in church cemeteries in Georgia. There are approximately 189 marked graves and at least 150 unmarked graves in the cemetery. Family plots are delineated by brick, granite, or cast-concrete curbing. Funerary art represented in the cemetery includes marble or granite flat slab markers, obelisks, box tombs, headstones, footstones, and government-issued markers.
Notable burials in the cemetery include founding members of the church; Dr. Joshua Gilbert (1815-1889) Atlanta’s first physician; Miss Sarah Hendon (d. 1910), a Civil War nurse; Joseph Willis, Jr. (1812-1875), early settler and operator of Willis’ Mill and the namesake of present-day Willis Mill Road SW; and veterans of the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War. African Americans were members of the church prior to Emancipation and there may be unmarked slave and post-bellum African American burials in the cemetery.
During the Civil War, the Battle of Utoy Creek (August 5-7, 1864) was fought in the vicinity of the cemetery. A Confederate field hospital was established at the church, and both Confederate and Union soldiers were treated at the site. The primary surgeon was Dr. Joshua Gilbert, Atlanta’s first physician, who was assisted by Sarah Hendon, a nurse, as well as nearby volunteers.
The National Register of Historic Places is our country's official list of historic buildings, structures, sites, objects, and districts worthy of preservation. The National Register provides formal recognition of a property's architectural, historical, or archaeological significance. It also identifies historic properties for planning purposes and insures that these properties will be considered in the planning of state or federally assisted projects. National Register listing encourages preservation of historic properties through public awareness, federal and state tax incentives, and grants. Listing in the National Register does not place obligations or restrictions on the use, treatment, transfer, or disposition of private property.