Old City Cemetery

Photo courtesy Kevin McGorty, Historic Tallahassee Preservation Board

Park Avenue Historic District
Park Avenue and Martin Luther King Boulevard

Contact:
City of Tallahassee Real Estate Division
(850) 545-5842

Tallahassee Trust for Historic Preservation, Inc.
(850) 488-3901

Hours of Operation:
Sunrise to Sunset

Tours:
Interpretive display; self guided walking tour brochure available on site

Admission:
Free

Significant Dates:

1829	Old City Cemetery is laid out by the Territorial Legislature.
1840	The City of Tallahassee acquires the Cemetery.
1937	Old City Cemetery is closed to African-American burials.
1991	After serious vandalism, the Cemetery is partially restored.

Description:

The oldest public burying ground in Tallahassee, Old City Cemetery was laid out by the Territorial Legislature in 1829. This scenic eleven acre site in the heart of downtown reflects the rich history and development of Tallahassee and Florida. Visitors can stroll through this green oasis, and visit the graves of Confederate and Union Civil War casualties, African-American leaders, yellow fever victims, and Florida governors and legislators. An interpretive kiosk at the entrance explains the history of Old City Cemetery, and contains self-guided walking tour brochures.

Facts and Figures:

Five years after the establishment of the City of Tallahassee in 1824, Florida's Territorial Legislature laid out Old City Cemetery as the public burying ground for the residents of the capital city. The cemetery was outside the original city limits.

The earliest markers were of wood, as it was very expensive to import carved stone markers from up north. None of these wooden markers remain. The earliest remaining marker is the simple marble tablet of Daniel Lynes of Connecticut.

After a serious yellow fever epidemic in 1841 during which between 230 and 400 Tallahasseeans died, the City established grids and lots in the cemetery to make burials more systematic. Whites were buried in the eastern half, and African-Americans in the western half.

Both Confederate and Union soldiers were buried in the cemetery in the 1860s. Union soldiers included African-Americans, casualties of the Battle of Natural Bridge, who were buried in the southwest portion of the cemetery. Old City Cemetery is also the final resting place of white Confederate soldiers, many from the Battle of Olustee near Lake City.

Florida's Governor from 1849-1853, Thomas Brown, is buried in Old City Cemetery, as is Florida's first African-American to graduate from medical school (Dr. William J. Gunn), and Florida's first ordained black Baptist minister, Rev. James Page.

Because the Jewish faith called for burying their dead in specially consecrated ground, in 1890 the City Council agreed to set aside a special section of the cemetery for Jewish burials. Many of them were later reinterred in Jacksonville.

On February 9, 1937, the City Council voted to prohibit the burial of African-Americans in the cemetery unless they could show they had already purchased a plot. As a result, the black community created the private Greenwood Cemetery Company to purchase land for their own cemetery.

In the late 1980s, vandals damaged many markers in Old City Cemetery.

In 1991, the restoration of the cemetery was begun. The City of Tallahassee and Florida Department of State provided major funding for the project, which was coordinated by the former Historic Tallahassee Preservation Board.

The City of Tallahassee completed the installation of a cast metal fence around the cemetery in 1994.

City of Tallahassee - Old City Cemetery