A couple of months ago Berkley Hudson, an old friend, was in town and called. He wanted to get together and walk through Columbus’ Friendship Cemetery exchanging stories of the people buried there.
Friendship Cemetery is most noted for its association with Memorial Day but that is not the subject of today’s column. The cemetery is actually a beautiful setting for a walk through history. The monuments there present a visual image of the past while those who rest there range from a friend of Thomas Jefferson to an Oscar winning Disney animator.
Most people associate the cemetery with the Civil War but there is so much more history there. It is the Civil War period plots of the cemetery that visually grab your attention. There are two plots within the grounds in which there are a total of about 1,260 marble military headstones marking the graves of Confederate soldiers who died in or on the way to military hospitals in Columbus. Within those areas are beautiful huge old magnolia trees. Those trees themselves tell a story.
In 1869 the Ladies Monumental Association was organized at the Methodist Church to erect a monument to the Confederate soldiers buried in Friendship Cemetery and help care for their graves. The original burial plot for Confederate soldiers was in the southwest corner of the cemetery. It quickly filled up after the Battle of Shiloh and a much larger plot opened on the northwest side of the cemetery. In 1869 the Ladies Monumental Association planted magnolias along the lane connecting the two burial plots and it was named Magnolia Avenue.
I think my favorite story of Friendship is one my mother told me when I was a small child. It was a story her mother had told her and is about Mrs. Munroe. Mrs Munroe’s resting place is a very old white painted brick mausoleum in the original section of the cemetery. As the story goes and it still never fails to happen, if you approach the mausoleum and call out, “Mrs. Munroe, Mrs. Munroe, what are you doing?” she will without fail say, “Nothing, nothing at all.”
Friendship is an old cemetery, having been established in 1849, but was not the first cemetery in Columbus. That distinction belonged to the Tombigbee Graveyard. That cemetery had been established around 1820 just south of the original city limits (a little north of where Riverview is located) on the bluff overlooking the Tombigbee.
The oldest graves in the cemetery were moved there from older cemeteries and include early settlers such as William Cocke. Cocke was a friend of Thomas Jefferson with whom he corresponded about Franklin Academy, Columbus and Mississippi’s first public school. Cocke had fought in both the American Revolution and the Creek Indian War/War of 1812. He was Tennessee’s first U.S. Senator and was a sometimes friend, sometimes enemy of Andrew Jackson.
Also buried there is A.B. Meek, a prominent poet and writer of the mid-1800s.
Meek wrote a poem, “Balaklava,” honoring the bravery of a fateful charge of the British Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaklava. The poem initially won high praise, and it was said that Queen Victoria was so moved by it that she had copies printed to be distributed to the public. However, the poem was eclipsed by, and took a back seat to, Alfred Lord Tennyson’s now immortal poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”
Among the many others whose stories are worth retelling are Agustus Jones, who froze to death when the ill-fated Steamer Eliza Battle caught fire and burned on a freezing, flooded Tombigbee River.
There is Josh Meador, the head of Animation Effects at Disney Studio during the golden age of Disney. Meador shared an Oscar for special effects in “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” and for 29 years was the person who made Disney’s animated characters come alive.
Clyde Kilby corresponded with and wrote biographical books on C.S. Lewis and was an editor for J.R.R. Tolkien. The list of the fascinating people resting at Friendship Cemetery could go on and on. There are so many stories to be told.
Many of the stories held by Friendship Cemetery are told each year at the Columbus Pilgrimage during MSMS’s Tales From the Crypt. If you haven’t attended one of those performances you have missed a treat.
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 37 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.