Read more Chattanooga History Columns
- Gaston: Paul John Kruesi was Edison's right-hand man
- Robbins: The old Richardson's house and the Civil War
- Gaston: James Williams was a man of the world
- Raney: Mason Evans, the 'Wild Man of the Chilhowee'
- Gaston: The legacy of Adolph Ochs endures
- Martin: Ed Johnson said, 'I have a changed heart,' the day before his lynching in Chattanooga on 1906
- Thomas: The inventiveness of Judge Michael M. Allison
- Moore: Chattanooga's first Chinese community
- Summers, Robbins: Chattanooga's Tuskegee Airman - Joseph C. White
- McCallie: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 says so!
- Gaston: John McCline's Civil War - from slave to D.C. parade
- Raney: Exploring Chattanooga businesses in the Green Book
- Elliott: Remembering the Freedmen's Bureau in Chattanooga
- Gaston: Nancy Ward was a beloved, respected Tennessean
- Martin: Prohibition - the noble experiment
- Elliott: 'A shameful, disgraceful deed': The destruction of the Sewanee cornerstone
- Gaston: Robert Cravens was ironmaster, Chattanooga area's first commuter
- Robbins: Dr. T.H. McCallie's Christmas 1863
- Robbins: Journalist writes of a trip to Missionary Ridge in 1896
- Summers, Robbins: Mine 21 disaster - gone but not forgotten
- Elliott: Collegedale incorporates to avoid Sunday 'blue laws'
- Gaston: 'Marse Henry' Watterson's journalism fame began in Chattanooga
- Robbins: Orchard Knob battle recalled in 1895
- Elliott: Chattanoogans joined in an 'orgy of joy and gladness' on Armistice Day, 1918
- Thomas: Noted service, speakers are marks of Rotary Club of Chattanooga since 1914
- Summers and Robbins: Remembering noted Tennessee author North Callahan
- Raney: 'I auto cry, I auto laugh, I auto sign my autograph'
- Gaston: Sequoyah's alphabet enriched Cherokees
- Robbins: A look at Sam Divine's life during the Civil War
- Robbins: Memories of a Confederate nurse
- Robbins: More notes from Bradford Torrey's 1895 visit to Chickamauga Battlefield
- Robbins: Journalist in 1895 details visit to Chickamauga Battlefield
- Elliott: Telephone exchange firebombing was distraction for grocery store robbery
- Gaston: Worcester brought Christ's message to Cherokee at Brainerd Mission
- Robbins: 1896 travel diary: 'A Week on Walden's Ridge'
- Gaston: Elizabeth Strayhorn, WAC Commandant at Fort Oglethorpe
- Robbins: The history of the Friends of Moccasin Bend National Park
- Moore: Do you own a Sears Roebuck home?
- Summers and Robbins: Camp Nathan Bedford Forrest in World War II
- Gaston: Hiram Sanborn Chamberlain remembered
- Elliott: Daisy the center of tile, ceramic manufacturing in Hamilton County
- Gaston: FDR inaugurates the Chickamauga Dam
- Summers, Robbins: Interned WWII Germans had it easy at Camp Crossville
- Elliott: A war correspondent on Lookout Mountain
- Gaston: Chickamaugas finally bury hatchet in Tennessee Valley
- Gaston: Chickamaugas in Chattanooga
- Robbins: The history of the Riverbend festival
- Raney: Sadie Watson, the first woman elected in Hamilton County government
- Moore: Remembering Chattanooga's Hawkinsville community
- Elliott: Welsh coal miners transformed Soddy after the Civil War
- Gaston: Chattanooga's best-kept secret
- Elliott: Cabell Breckinridge loses his horse
- Raney: Martin Fleming is the people's judge
- Gaston: The amazing career of Francis Lynde
- Martin: Hamilton County's Name Sake: Alexander Hamilton
- Summers, Robbins: The crosses at Sewanee
- Bledsoe: The fiery truce at Kennesaw Mountain
- Moore: Talented architect's life cut short by tragedy
- Rydell: Chattanooga's place in soccer history
- Robbins: Tennessee Coal, member of the First Dow Jones Industrial Average
- Raney: In the barber chair
- Lanier: Becoming the Boyce Station Neighborhood Association
- McCallie: John P. Franklin: Living history among us
- Barr: Chattanooga's first railroad: The Underground Railroad
- Summers, Robbins: Charles Bartlett was a Pulitzer Prize winner, Kennedy confidant
- Rainey: 'We have seen it'
- Elliott: Feinting and fighting at Running Water Creek and Johnson's Crook
- Gaston: The Spring Frog Cabin at Audubon Acres
- Raney: Wauhatchie Pike was moonshine motorway
- Robbins: Oakmont was home of venerable Williams clan
- Summers and Robbins: Rebirth of the Mountain Goat Line
- Elliott: Bad investments led to Soddy Bank failure in 1930
- Summers and Robbins: Pearl Harbor attack left football behind
- Gaston: Jolly’s Island namesake had long ties with Sam Houston
- Return Jonathan Meigs, Indian Agent
- Moore: Did you know about St. Elmo's other two cemeteries?
- Summers: Orme - Marion County's almost lost community
- Davis: Spooky revival at Sharp Mountain in 1873
- Robbins: The story of Longholm
- Raney: Women labored to help the U.S. win World War I
- Even in the city, the 'wheel' changed everything
- Murray: Confederate dilemma after Chickamauga
- J.B. Collins — Newsman extraordinaire
- Robbins: The Story of the Lyndhurst Mansion
- Chattanooga artist and wife lost on the Lusitania
- Chattanooga History Column: Battelle, Alabama and the Battelle Institute
- John Ross, a founder of Chattanooga
- Hamilton County casualties in World War I
- Chattanooga Power Couple
- 'Somewhere in France'
- The Ray Moss family
- Battery B from Chattanooga
- Ulysses S. Grant, Clark B. Lagow, and the Chattanooga Bender
- Songbirds Museum Timeline
- Hamilton County World War 1 roster
- The Soddy Girl and the Memphis Belle
- Blues icon Bessie Smith was the Empress of Soul
- Women's Army Corps at Chickamauga
- Emma Bell Miles' life at the top of the 'W'
- The Tivoli Wurlitzer is one of Chattanooga's priceless assets
- Chattanooga in struggle for freedom during Civil War
- October 1918, Chattanooga paralyzed by Spanish flu epidemic
- Eli Lilly and the Ditch of Death
- One hundred years ago, Chattanooga goes to war
- The legacy of Anna Safley Houston
- Harriet Whiteside was ahead of her time
- Southern Adventist University
- Chattanooga native's writings aided Civil Rights movement
- Zion College, Chattanooga's only African American College
- The North Shore's hidden past
- Mayme Martin -- Businesswoman and community leader
- Thomas Sim's epic struggle for freedom
- Top of Cameron Hill was price of rerouting interstate
- Cameron Hill has rich history
- Temperance movement included Harriman university
- The sweetest music this side of Heaven
- Conquistadors at Chattanooga
- Chattanooga and the 'General'
- Chattanooga's first Thanksgiving, 1863
- Chattanooga's greatest flood caught city unaware
- Opening the Cracker Line
- European trip in 1900 enlightens Sophia Scholze Long
- Sophia Scholze Long spoke out when others were silent
- Little South Pittsburg and its big silent movie stars
- Lot attendant recalls hottest job in Chattanooga
- Chattanooga's Forest Hills is final resting place for known, unknown
- Burritt College -- Pioneer of the Cumberlands
- Chattanooga's nicknames trace city's evolution
- The 25th annual meeting of the Tennessee Press Association
- Clemons Brothers Furniture Store
- The Short Life of the USS Chattanooga
- Ellen Jarnagin McCallie lived a truly remarkable life
- Dr. Jonathan Bachman was a revered city father
- Second guessing the Confederate failure on Missionary Ridge
- Nancy Kefauver, ambassador for the arts
- William Gibbs McAdoo kept his Southern roots
- Chattanooga's Secretary of the Treasury
- Howard Baker remembered as a statesman/photographer who snapped history
- Tivoli's last picture show
- The history of one of Chattanooga's oldest businesses
- Chattanooga's roller derby skaters
- Myths of Coca-Cola in Chattanooga
- Chattanooga's neighborhood grocery stores
- The tale of the Scottsboro Boys
- The people's history of Chattanooga
- Howard School is Chattanooga's reminder of Reconstruction
- Elevator operator, painter, mystery man: meet Rice Carothers
- Raulston Schoolfield made enemies amid his rise to power
- Website lets users peer into Chattanooga's past
- The flood of 1917
- Chattanooga's 'wickedest woman' buried at Forest Hills
- History of Cummings Highway
In the years following the Civil War, Chattanooga experienced rapid industrialization and growth. Both Confederate and Union veterans, some who fought around Chattanooga and realized the area's potential, opened businesses and developed the land surrounding the city.
One such entrepreneur, Abraham Johnson, arrived in Chattanooga in 1851. By the time the Civil War began, he was a railroad superintendent and married to Thankful Whitehead, daughter of wealthy land developer and industrialist, James Whitehead.
By the 1880s, Johnson was developing property at the foot of Lookout Mountain into Chattanooga's first suburb, St. Elmo. Beginning with property inherited by his wife, Johnson bought large tracts of land including 100-plus acres, which became Forest Hills Cemetery.
Believing the growing city needed a new cemetery, Johnson joined in August 1874 with banker Theodore Montague, lawyer Xenophon Wheeler, physician Tomlinson Fort and former Chattanooga mayor, Willard Abbott, and his brother, Colton, in chartering a cemetery association. They were soon joined by additional businessmen, each contributing $3 to cover the cost of the charter.
Originally named "Oakland," the name was soon changed to "Forest Hills." The first burial took place in August 1880. Ironically, Englishman Walter Hayter, who was hired to survey the cemetery, died suddenly and was buried in Section 1, Lot 1.
Over the next few years, bodies were moved to Forest Hills from family cemeteries and Citizens Cemetery. Confederate and Union dead were also re-interred. Among the Confederate dead was Gen. Francis Marion Walker, who died during the Battle of Atlanta and was originally buried in Griffin, Ga. Families purchased multiple plots, the largest of which contained space for 85 graves. There is room in the cemetery for about 70,000 graves. Only about 46,000 graves are currently occupied.
In the early days, the cemetery looked somewhat different. There was a pond in the middle of the grounds, plus a superintendent's home with its basement stable, a gatehouse, a shelter house and a flower shop. The superintendent's house, which was near Tennessee Avenue, and the shelter houses were torn down in the 1950s. Bricks from the superintendent's house were used to construct the current cemetery office. The lake was drained. As the trees and shrubs, including many azaleas and giant oaks grew, the cemetery began to take on the lush beauty we see today.
The position of gatekeeper was an honor usually bestowed on a Civil War veteran. One gatekeeper was Confederate veteran Henry Gothard, who sounded a bell whenever a funeral cortege approached, signaling the grounds keepers to cease work. As the cortege passed through the gates, Gothard "rose to his feet, gave the salute of the South and stood at attention" until it passed.
He also kept watch over the roller skates and bicycles of Lookout Junior High School students, who deposited their equipment with him on their way to school. Another gatekeeper was Union veteran Henry Miller.
While some of Chattanooga's most notable and influential citizens are buried there, Forest Hills is the final resting place of many ordinary citizens. Plots were reserved for the children of the Vine Street Orphanage and the Florence Crittenden Home, as well as the Old Ladies Home. The city of Chattanooga purchased a large plot for police and firemen who died in the line of duty. Originally, an area at the rear of the cemetery was set aside for African-American burials (The cemetery was desegregated in the 1960s).
A walk through the cemetery, especially in the spring and fall, reveals not only large trees and flowering shrubs, but also fine examples of historic tombstone art. One can see the final resting place of area citizens with recognizable names including: opera singer and Academy Award winner Grace Moore; Chattanooga Lookouts owner and "King of the Minor Leagues" Joe Engel; Krystal founders Rody Davenport and Glenn Sherrill; Cortez Greer, a singer with "a voice as deep as a well and soft as butter;" and Tennessee governor James Frazier.
Many educators, nurses, physicians, ministers, government employees, soldiers, politicians, entertainers, homemakers and shop owners are also buried there, each with their own story. One such person was Mayme Martin, who owned the Martin Hotel on Ninth Street from 1936 until 1985. The hotel was the center of African-American social life for many years and hosted many African-American entertainers and athletes. Mayme died in a 1986 fire in the boarding house she operated for those who had no place to go when the Martin Hotel closed.
Gay Moore is the author of "Chattanooga's Forest Hills Cemetery" and "Chattanooga's St Elmo." For more information contact Chattahistoricalassoc.org.