Woolfolk family graves restored after vandalism at Rose Hill Cemetery

The Woolfolk family burial plot, a gravesite in Macon’s historic Rose Hill Cemetery well-known for its connection to an infamous Georgia murder case, was repaired recently after vandals destroyed parts of it in July.

Nine members of the Woolfolk family who were brutally ax murdered in 1887 were laid to rest in Rose Hill, including  Richard F. Woolfolk, his wife Mattie Howard, their six children and Howard’s aunt, Temperance West.

The gruesome details of the case sparked public interest over the years and the family’s gravesites also garnered attention. 

Vandals uprooted several Woolfolk gravemarkers July 7, ripping up the top layer of bricks in some of the grave shafts and even yanking a 100-pound headstone from the ground.

“All of the grave shafts in Rose Hill Cemetery that are from the 1800s are made out of brick and lime,”  president of Rose Hill Preservation & Restoration, Inc. Joey Fernandez said. “They’re all going to fall apart eventually, but when you expose moisture and rain water and runoff and you don’t have that top layer on, it gets into the other bricks, into the mortar. Then that’s when the grave collapses.”

The original brick and lime mortar are much softer and porous than modern-day materials. The mortar breaks down over hundreds of years exposed to the elements, explained Ferandez, who also likened the bricks to a sponge.

In the early 2000s, the original brick graves were reinforced with stronger mortar. Such repairs only caused more damage to the bricks, however, because moisture couldn’t permeate the new mortar joints and instead wore away at the original bricks, creating spalling. 

When the vandals ripped up the original bricks, the newer mortar remained stuck to them, making them unusable. More than 100 original bricks had to be replaced.  

Although the vandals did thousands of dollars worth of damage to the Woolfolk plot, the real damage is to the long-term structural integrity of the graveshafts.

Grave shafts are supported by a foundation of several hundred bricks below the surface, Ferandez told The Melody, damage to one brick can affect the integrity of the whole grave shaft.

“Anytime you touch just one of these bricks, it just starts a process to where it just declines,” he said. “The other ones follow suit. It might take 10 years, it might take 20 years but just pulling out one of those causes problems.”