Fort Hill Cemetery: Buried but not forgotten history

In 1806, the Ocmulgee River served as the western boundary of the southern United States. In that same year, President Thomas Jefferson ordered the construction of Fort Hawkins on 14 of the 100 acres reserved for it. It was built to protect settlers from the Muscogee (Creek) tribe, whose ancestral lands the U.S. government claimed. By 1821, the U.S. border had shifted west to the Flint River, and the fort was no longer needed. 

Death and taxes are the two certainties in this world, thus a burial ground was established near the fort, and the first interment took place in 1808. In an unusual move for that time, the burial ground did not delineate separate areas for Black and white individuals. 

In 1823, when the Georgia legislature created Macon on the west side of the Ocmulgee, a measure was included “to grant and secure to commissioners of the incorporation of the town of Macon, five acres of ground at or near Fort Hawkins for the purpose of a public burying ground.” This recognized that a burial ground had been in existence since 1808 on this previously federally-owned land and granted the cemetery to the new town of Macon.  

For years, the cemetery at Fort Hill (sometimes referred to as the East Macon Cemetery) received little notice from the government of Macon. A surveyor hired in 1885 to find the boundaries reported that as many burials could be found outside the official boundary of the cemetery as could be found inside. 

Adjacent to Fort Hill Cemetery, Lamar Clay owned six acres that also served as a private burial ground and collected money for digging graves and burying the deceased. There was no such provision for the city-owned cemetery next door. In Fort Hill, the city provided no services and the dead were buried without any government supervision.  

In an 1892 meeting, The Macon Telegraph reported that approximately 200 people complained that the East Macon cemetery is in a “badly dilapidated and unkempt condition with no one having authority to prevent trespassing or internments, (and that) it’s necessary to place some restrictions to these ‘promiscuous interments.”

The article continued that, “In the past any one has assumed the right to dig graves and make interments in whatever place and at whatever time was convenient to those interested. It being a well known fact that many have been buried here at night, and a few times the party interred was unknown to those who made the interment.” The meeting was described by the reporter as “spicy.”

In 1914, the city government bought the cemetery owned by Lamar Clay and combined it with Fort Hill Cemetery. It formally asserted control by appointing a sexton and enacting ordinances concerning burials, as well as building a fence around the grounds. The new sexton began keeping records of all interments. 

Several attempts have been made by private groups or individuals to document the burials in Fort Hill Cemetery. Based upon those efforts and the formal record keeping that began in 1914, there are approximately 9,000 to 10,000 people buried there. 

As other cemeteries opened, Fort Hill Cemetery received fewer and fewer burials, the most recent of which in September, 2024. Today, no plots are available for purchase in Fort Hill Cemetery because of the fear of finding an unmarked grave once digging begins. 

The Fort Hill Cemetery is the final resting place of many of Macon’s earliest residents. Considered the earliest settlers to this area, brothers Roger and Eleazar McCall of Connecticut arrived in 1818. They were the first to build boats to transport cotton grown in Jones and Baldwin counties down the Ocmulgee to the port of Darien on the coast. 

In 1823, they were both included in the group of citizens who helped a surveyor lay out the town of Macon. In 1825, Eleazar was among the first elected commissioners in the new city, and later became a justice of the peace. He was also among the first members of the newly-created Masonic Lodge.  As Macon grew, the two brothers opened a saw mill and a cotton warehouse in in the city.

When Roger died in 1844, he was buried in Fort Hill Cemetery. In 1853, Eleazar died of pleurisy and was buried there, too.  

Fort Hill is accessible by turning off Emery Highway onto Short Street. After a few blocks, the entrance will be in the curve as Short Street turns right and becomes Hall Street.  

In 2025, Liz Riley and Kathleen O’Neal began a visual inventory of every monument in Rose Hill Cemetery. The goal of this project is to provide a free, complete and accurate database of those interred, as well as maps for locating them. This column shares the fascinating stories discovered during this project.