Mission Statement: To preserve
and maintain Linwood Cemetery
as a historic and cultural site of
importance to the city of Columbus
and its citizens, to assist the city of
Columbus in restoring, preserving,
improving, maintaining, and
managing Linwood Cemetery, and
to educate the public with respect
to the cultural and historic values
of Linwood Cemetery, and for other
educational and charitable purposes.

1828-2002
174 years of service

Linwood Cemetery Map | Location of Linwood Cemetery

     Linwood Cemetery is a place where the past jumps to life among the many unique marble and granite markers that yield the names of those from various cultures who came to this frontier town to stay or intended to pass through to new vistas, only to remain at rest permanently in the cemetery.

     Linwood Cemetery, the oldest institution of the Columbus City government, began "functioning" four months before the creation of the town. The Georgia General Assembly called for the establishment of a "trading town at the Falls of the Chattahoochee" River. Five appointed Commissioners hired surveyor Edward Lloyd Thomas. Thomas' son, Truman, who was assisting his father, became ill during the survey and died on March 26, 1828. Thomas buried him in the area which was designated as the town cemetery. The location of Truman's grave is not known.

     The earliest marked graves in Linwood are dated 1833, five years after the cemetery was established. This location was called the City Cemetery until 1894 when it was officially designated as Linwood Cemetery. A fashionable suburb known as Linwood, named from a popular novel, Ernest Linwood, by Caroline Lee Hentz, who briefly lived in Columbus, was nearby and the cemetery took on that name. The cemetery reflects the development of Columbus. The simple headstones randomly placed and family plots enclosed by locally crafted iron fences or brick walls containing modest slabs or elaborately carved monuments let visitors read the economic and social history of Columbus in stone.

     Burials were not recorded at all in Linwood's Old Cemetery, which was on top of the hill, guarded by the large oak trees. It wasn't until 1845 that lots were systematically plotted outside the Old Cemetery and a record of sales was first recorded. Cemetery records of burials were not kept in ledgers until 1866. Before that time the Sexton provided separate lists of burials monthly or quarterly to the Columbus Council. These reports are lost to historians today. Throughout the cemetery there are many unmarked graves. It will never be known who lies there, or what contribution they made to the community.

     Thomas designated a location for a second cemetery, for "slaves and free negroes", which today has only an iron marker to indicate the site. Later, Porterdale Cemetery was developed for Black burials.

     The City of Columbus has four major cemeteries. They are Porterdale and Linwood which are on the National Historic Register, East Porterdale, and Riverdale. All City Cemetery Records are kept at the City Sexton's Office located at Riverdale Cemetery.

     Records of all cemeteries were last microfilmed in 2000. Microfilmed records are available in Columbus, Georgia, in Atlanta at   the Georgia State Archives, and the LDS Family History Library throughout the world.
 

     You are invited to tour Linwood Cemetery.