Evergreen Cemetery

Evergreen Cemetery is a 13.8-acre city-owned cemetery located between Paul W. Bryant Drive and 12th Street, and between 10th and 12th Avenues, east of Calvary Baptist Church and south of Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa.

The cemetery was established as a cluster of family grave sites in the 1840s. James Somerville, who died in 1842, is the first recorded burial. By the late 1850s, Evergreen, known as "the new cemetery" was considered so preferable to the older Greenwood Cemetery that some families relocated the remains of their relatives. In the 1880s the Evergreen Cemetery Company was incorporated with John Harris, A. B. McEachin, W. F. Fitts Jr, and J. I. Hausman among its trustees. Dr James Searcy deeded the cemetery property to the City of Tuscaloosa in 1903. In 1906 the city acquired a 3-acre adjoining parcel from F. W. Monnish for expansion.

Frequent acts of vandalism in the 1960s led the city to demolish all but two of the above-ground mausolea that had formerly marked the cemetery. The engraved panels from those structures were re-laid on the ground.

The last unsold plot at the cemetery was sold in 2013. The Alabama Historical Association erected a marker at the cemetery in 2014. The committee that managed the cemetery for the city disbanded in 2017. A maintenance fund which stood at more than $353,000 in 2008 had diminished to lass than half that amount by 2016. The Tuscaloosa Department of Infrastructure and Public Services supports maintenance of the property.

Notable burials

• Bert Bank (1914–2009), broadcaster
• Newton Clements (1834–1900), U.S. Representative
• Jeff Coleman, Alabama Crimson Tide athletics director
• Henry Collier (1801–1855), Governor of Alabama
• Lemuel Dawson (1865–1938), Baptist minister
• Mary Ella Dees (1911–2004), actor
• Edward DeGraffenreid (1899–1974), U.S. Representative
• Richard Foster
• Frances Nimmo Greene (1867–1937), writer
• Amelia Gayle Gorgas, University of Alabama librarian and Postmaster of Tuscaloosa
• Josiah Gorgas (1818–1883), Confederate general
• Lafayette Guild, physician
• F. G. Hocutt (1905–1993), undertaker
• Burwell Lewis (1838–1885), U.S. Representative
• William March (died 1954), writer
• Joshua Martin (1799–1856), Governor of Alabama
• Hargrove Van de Graaff (1893–1938), Alabama Crimson Tide assistant football coach
• Sterling Wood (1823–1891), Confederate general

References

• Ellsworth, Alexandra (April 8, 2014) "City protects cemeteries" The Crimson White
• Casagrande, Michael (September 19, 2018) "The story of Alabama football's quiet neighbors." AL.com

External links

• Alabama Football's Quiet Neighbors on YouTube.com
• Evergreen Cemetery at Findagrave.com