An Archeological Survey of Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery, Clarke County, Georgia

Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery is a ca. 9 acre subscription cemetery (not affiliated with a particular church) that was founded in 1882 for use by African-Americans. It was then located on the northeastern outskirts of Athens and is located between Fourth Street and the CSX railroad just east of Springfield Baptist Church (Figure 1). It was created and administered by the Gospel Pilgrim Society and fell out of use in the 1970s. Although it has been labeled as the Springfield Church Cemetery on several maps (including the USGS Athens East quadrangle and a bank map of Athens), it never was affiliated with the church. It has been largely neglected for the past several decades and is now heavily overgrown with often dense ground cover and understory vegetation. It was determined to be an abandoned cemetery in 2002, pursuant to OCGA 36-72-2. The cemetery is now the focus of a restoration effort being coordinated by the East Athens Development Corporation (EADC), with technical assistance from the Northeast Georgia Regional Development Center (NEGRDC). The EADC is a non-profit organization charged with community development in Athens. One of the first steps in this effort is to conduct an archival and field study of the cemetery with the goal of developing a plan for the restoration. One aspect of this first study is an archeological survey of the cemetery tract, and this document presents the results of such a survey that was conducted by Southeastern Archeological Services in July and August of 2003. The more specific goals and tasks of the archeological survey were presented in a letter proposal from The Jaeger Company dated April 18, 2003 and will be summarized here. The primary goal and task was to create as accurate a map as possible of the cemetery. On our first visit to the cemetery we realized that we could not possibly count, delineate and map all the graves, as there appeared to be well over 1000 graves and the area is thickly vegetated. We proposed to create a map using hand held instruments, such as Global Positioning System units and fiberglass tapes. Formal surveying methods (by use of a total station) was beyond the scope of this first phase of survey. We quickly found that the GPS units would not work well underneath the tree canopy (with most readings having a deviation of up to 30 ft), so resorted to using a compass and fiberglass tape, which proved to be very effective and accurate. We knew that there was some sort of road system and that this would be a critical component to map. Another aspect of the mapping would focus on the boundaries of the cemetery, with the expressed goal of determining if any graves extend beyond the legal boundaries of the cemetery. With the principal road system mapped in, we then proposed to plot in various landmarks within the body of the cemetery, mainly certain, more prominent family plots. We also proposed to map the main vegetation patterns and the topography of the tract. Aside from mapping we proposed to describe the cemetery and the graves contained within it. We wanted to provide an accurate characterization of the types, ages and number of the graves.