The story behind a Tiffany & Co. monument in Rose Hill Cemetery

Just off Central Avenue in Rose Hill Cemetery stands a monument made by Tiffany & Company in New York. This eight-foot cross marks the graves of Shatteen and William Brookes. Their story begins and ends in Macon, Georgia.

 In 1861, Chloe Bartlett, the daughter of the founder of the Macon Telegraph, married Shatteen Claude Mitchell. Shatteen had recently earned his law degree as part of the inaugural class of the University of Georgia’s law school. When the Civil War began, Mitchell enlisted in the Confederate Army and achieved the rank of captain. In September of 1864, Captain Mitchell was killed in battle in Virginia. Four months later, his wife, Chloe, gave birth to a daughter who was named “Shatteen” in her husband’s honor.

Shatteen Mitchell, whose nickname was “Chattie,” was raised near Griffin. She attended elocution courses in New York City and was well-known throughout the southeast for her dramatic performances. Eventually, Miss Mitchell became a professor at Agnes Scott College.

At the age of 48, Miss Mitchell married William Brookes, a prominent Atlanta lawyer. Their elaborate wedding ceremony included a reception with several hundred guests, followed by a honeymoon to Palm Beach, Cuba, Jamaica and New York. When they returned to Atlanta, they bought a house on Peachtree Street. This house, designed by Neil Reid, was supposedly a replica of Villa Julia on Lake Como. Shatteen named the house “Villa Chatteena.”

William and Shatteen were very social and traveled extensively. Newspaper articles frequently mention parties and receptions at Villa Chatteena. William and Shatteen’s travels took them to North Carolina, New York, Egypt and the Holy Land. 

Shatteen was also a member of the oldest women’s study club in Atlanta, the Atlanta Historical Society, the Every Saturday Club and the Women’s Missionary and Benevolent Society of Second Baptist Church. Additionally, she was a Daughter of the American Revolution.

William and Shatteen were very philanthropic. In memory of her father, Shatteen donated money to the Stone Mountain Monument Association and to Darlington School in Rome, Georgia. After the death of William in 1924, Shatteen donated enough money to the Ponce de Leon Baptist Church to replace the organ, and William left $50,000 for foreign mission work. 

When William Brookes passed away, Shatteen commissioned a memorial from Tiffany & Co. in New York. Tiffany & Co. was owned by Louis Comfort Tiffany, the son of the famous jeweler Charles Tiffany. Louis Tiffany was internationally celebrated for his stained glass, particularly his Tiffany lamps. 

While working on stained glass for mausoleums, Louis was inspired to design grave monuments. He created 763 monuments, with only seven located in Georgia. 

The monument Shatteen commissioned from Tiffany & Co. was made from Verdun granite and covered in a carved vine of passion flowers. On the back of the cross are the letters “IHS”, a traditional Christogram derived from the first three letters of Jesus’s name in Greek. 

The piece bears the official Tiffany stamp and a copyright date. This cross stands in the Bartlett family plot, where Shatteen and William, Shatteen’s mother and Shatteen’s grandparents are buried. A cenotaph in memory of Captain Mitchell, who is buried on the battlefield in Virginia, is on Shatteen’s mother’s gravestone. 

Earlier this year, 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.