Oakland Cemetery

The Historic Oakland Foundation is offering fresh, hand-made wreaths to be placed on graves as a token of remembrance of your loved ones. The wreaths will be placed starting the first week of December and removed in early January. Additional wreaths may be ordered and picked up at the Visitors Center. All proceeds from the wreath sales will benefit Oakland's gardens.

City fathers purchased six acres in 1850 to be a public burial ground for a young but fast-growing town that already had a population of more than 2,500. It was designed as a rural garden cemetery, a 19th Century innovation conceived as an alternative to traditional graveyards which often were crowded and aesthetically unappealing.

Originally called Atlanta Graveyard or City Burial Place, Oakland was renamed in 1872. By then it had expanded to 48 acres, mainly due to pressures of the Civil War. During the war, the City and the Confederate government added land to bury soldiers who died in local hospitals. As fighting drew closer and engulfed Atlanta, more burial space was needed. After the war, space was added to provide a proper final resting place for soldiers who had been hastily buried on area battlefields. By 1867 the cemetery reached its present size.

Two historical markers within Oakland describe its connections with momentous events of the Civil War.

In 1862, Union operatives known as Andrews Raiders commandeered a locomotive at present-day Kennesaw and raced north to cut telegraph lines. They were captured and condemned as spies. Seven were hanged near Oakland's southeast corner and interred in the cemetery before removal to the National Cemetery at Chattanooga.

On high ground north of the Bell Tower, a two-story farmhouse stood in the summer of 1864. It served as headquarters for Confederate commander John B. Hood during the Battle of Atlanta, which was fought to the east of the cemetery on July 22.

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